■ 



■ 
■ 






fr r* 



'»>«".', 



•f&. 



. , I 






■ 



■ 







<tesJELR54a3 

\%s\ 



THE LIFE 



OP 



JOHN STERLING: 



BY 



THOMAS CABLYLE. 




LONDON: 
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY. 

MDCCCII. 



.< 



f 

K 



C n t f n t s. 



PART I. 

PAGE 

Chap. I. Introductory 3 

II. Birth and Parentage 12 

3H. Schools: Llanblethian ; Paris; London . . 20 
IY. Universities: Glasgow; Cambridge ... 40 

Y. A Profession 50 

YL Literature : The Athen^um . . . .57 

YII. Regent Street 60 

YIII. Coleridge ........ 69 

IX. Spanish Exiles . . . . . . , .81 

X. Torrijos 86 

XI. Marriage : Ill-Health ; West Indies . . 96 
XLI. Island oe St. Yincent . . . . .101 

XTTT. A Catastrophe . 112 

XIY. Pause 117 

XY. Bonn; Herstmonceux 122 



PART II. 

Chap. I. Curate 131 

II. Not Curate 136 

III. Bayswater 156 

IY. To Bordeaux . 171 



IV CONTENTS. 

PAGK 

Chap. Y. To Madeira 188 

VI. Literature : The Sterling Club . . . 203 

VII. Italy 211 

VIII. Clieton . . . 238 

IX. Two Winters 256 

X. Falmouth: Poems 269 

XI. Naples: Poems 289 

XH. Disaster on Disaster 301 

XTTT. Ventnor: Death 319 

XIV. Conclusion 333 



LIFE OE JOHN STEELING. 



PART I. 



B 



JOHN STEELING. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Near seven years ago, a short while before his death in 
1844, John Sterling committed the care of his literary 
Character and printed Writings to two friends, Arch- 
deacon Hare and myself. His estimate of the bequest 
was far from overweening ; to few men could the small 
sum-total of his activities in this world seem more in- 
considerable than, in those last solemn days, it did to 
him. He had burnt much ; found much unworthy ; 
looking steadfastly into the silent continents of Death 
and Eternity, a brave man's judgments about his own 
sorry work in the field of Time are not apt to be too 
lenient. But, in fine, here was some portion of his work 
which the world had already got hold of, and which he 
could not burn. This too, since it was not to be abo- 
lished and annihilated, but must still for some time live 
and act, he wished to be wisely settled, as the rest had 
been. And so it was left in charge to us, the survivors, 



4 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

to do for it what we judged fittest, if indeed doing 
nothing did not seem the fittest to us. This message, 
communicated after his decease, was naturally a sacred 
one to Mr. Hare and me. 

After some consultation on it, and survey of the 
difficulties and delicate considerations involved in it, 
Archdeacon Hare and I agreed that the whole task, of 
selecting what Writings were to be reprinted, and of 
drawing up a Biography to introduce them, should be 
left to him alone ; and done without interference of 
mine : — as accordingly it was,* in a manner surely far 
superior to the common, in every good quality of edit- 
ing ; and visibly everywhere bearing testimony to the 
friendliness, the piety, perspicacity and other gifts and 
virtues of that eminent and amiable man. 

In one respect, however, if in one only, the arrange- 
ment had been unfortunate. Archdeacon Hare, both 
by natural tendency and by his position as a Church- 
man, had been led, in editing a Work not free from 
ecclesiastical heresies, and especially in writing a Life 
very full of such, to dwell with preponderating emphasis 
on that part of his subject; by no means extenuating 
the fact, nor yet passing lightly over it (which a layman 
could have done) as needing no extenuation ; but care- 
fully searching into it, with the view of excusing and 
explaining it ; dwelling on it, presenting all the docu- 
ments of it, and as it were spreading it over the whole 
field of his delineation ; as if religious heterodoxy had 
been the grand fact of Sterling's life, which even to the 
Archdeacon's mind it could by no means seem to be. 
Hinc 'dice lachrymoe. For the Religious Newspapers, 

* John Sterling's Essays and Tales, with Life, by Archdeacon Hare. 
Parker ; London, 1848. 



Chap. I. INTRODUCTORY. 5 

and Periodical Heresy-hunters, getting very lively in 
those years, were prompt to seize the cue, and have pro- 
secuted and perhaps still prosecute it, in their sad way, 
to all lengths and breadths. John Sterling's character 
and writings, which had little business to be spoken of 
in any Church-court, have hereby been carried thither 
as if for an exclusive trial; and the mournfullest set of 
pleadings, out of which nothing but a misjudgment can 
be formed, prevail there ever since. The noble Ster- 
ling, a radiant child of the empyrean, clad in bright 
auroral hues in the memory of all that knew him, — 
what is he doing here in inquisitorial sanbenito, with 
nothing but ghastly spectralities prowling round him, 
and inarticulately screeching and gibbering what they 
call their judgment on him ! 

' The sin of Hare's Book,' says one of my Corre- 
spondents in those years, ' is easily defined, and not 
1 very condemnable, but it is nevertheless ruinous to 
e his task as Biographer. He takes up Sterling as a 

* clergyman merely. Sterling, I find, was a curate for 
' exactly eight months ; during eight months and no 

* more had he any special relation to the Church. But 

* he was a man, and had relation to the Universe, for 
' eight and thirty years : and it is in this latter character, 
1 to which all the others were but features and transi- 
' tory hues, that we wish to know him. His battle with 
' hereditary Church-formulas was severe ; but it was by 
e no means his one battle with things inherited, nor in- 

* deed his chief battle ; neither, according to my obser- 

* vation of what it was, is it successfully delineated or 
1 summed up in this Book. The truth is, nobody that 
' had known Sterling would recognise a feature of him 
' here ; you would never dream that this Book treated 



6 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

' of him at all. A pale sickly shadow in torn surplice 
' is presented to us here ; weltering bewildered amid 
' heaps of what you call " Hebrew Old-clothes ;" wrest- 
1 ling, with impotent impetuosity, to free itself from the 
e baleful imbroglio, as if that had been its one function 
' in life : who in this miserable figure would recognise 
1 the brilliant, beautiful and cheerful John Sterling, with 
■ his ever-flowing wealth of ideas, fancies, imaginations ; 
' with his frank affections, inexhaustible hopes, audaci- 
' ties, activities, and general radiant vivacity of heart 

* and intelligence, which made the presence of him an 
1 illumination and inspiration wherever he went ? It is 

* too bad. Let a man be honestly forgotten when his 
1 life ends ; but let him not be misremembered in this 
1 way. To be hung up as an ecclesiastical scarecrow, as 
1 a target for heterodox and orthodox to practise arch- 
' ery upon, is no fate that can be due to the memory of 
' Sterling. It was not as a ghastly phantasm, choked 
1 in Thirty-nine-article controversies, or miserable Se- 
1 mitic, Anti-semitic street-riots, — in scepticisms, ago- 
' nised self-seekings, — that this man appeared in life ; 
i nor as such, if the world still wishes to look at him, 
1 should you suffer the world's memory of him now to 
( be. Once for all, it is unjust; emphatically untrue as 
' an image of John Sterling : perhaps to few men that 

* lived along with him could such an interpretation of 
' their existence be more inapplicable.' 

Whatever truth there might be in these rather pas- 
sionate representations, and to myself there wanted not 
a painful feeling of their truth, it by no means appeared 
what help or remedy any friend of Sterling's, and es- 
pecially one so related to the matter as myself, could 



Chap. I. INTRODUCTORY. 7 

attempt in the interim. Perhaps endure in patience 
till the dust laid itself again, as all dust does if you 
leave it well alone ? Much obscuration would thus of 
its own accord fall away ; and, in Mr. Hare's narrative 
itself, apart from his commentary, many features of 
Sterling's true character would become decipherable to 
such as sought them. Censure, blame of this Work of 
Mr. Hare's was naturally far from my thoughts. A 
"Work which distinguishes itself by human piety and 
candid intelligence; which, in all details, is careful, 
lucid, exact ; and which offers, as we say, to the ob- 
servant reader that will interpret facts, many traits of 
Sterling besides his heterodoxy. Censure of it, from 
me especially, is not the thing due ; from me a far 
other thing is due ! — 

On the whole, my private thought was : First, How 
happy it comparatively is, for a man of any earnestness 
of life, to have no Biography written of him ; but to 
return silently, with his small, sorely foiled bit of work, 
to the Supreme Silences, who alone can judge of it or 
him ; and not to trouble the reviewers, and greater or 
lesser public, with attempting to judge it! The idea 
of ' fame,' as they call it, posthumous or other, does 
not inspire one with much ecstacy in these points of 
view. — Secondly, That Sterling's performance and real 
or seeming importance in this world was actually not 
of a kind to demand an express Biography, even ac- 
cording to the world's usages. His character was not 
supremely original ; neither was his fate in the world 
wonderful. What he did was inconsiderable enough ; 
and as to what it lay in him to have done, this was but 
a problem, now beyond possibility of settlement. Why 
had a Biography been inflicted on this man ; why had 



8 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

not No-biography, and the privilege of all the weary, 
been his lot ? — Thirdly, That such lot, however, 
could now no longer be my good Sterling's ; a tu- 
mult having risen around his name, enough to im- 
press some pretended likeness of him (about as like 
as the Guy-Fauxes are, on Gunpowder Day) upon the 
minds of many men : so that he could not be forgot- 
ten, and could only be misremembered, as matters now 
stood. 

Whereupon, as practical conclusion to the whole, 
arose by degrees this final thought, That, at some 
calmer season, when the theological dust had well fallen, 
and both the matter itself, and my feelings on it, were 
in a suitabler condition, I ought to give my testimony 
about this friend whom I had known so well, and re- 
cord clearly what my knowledge of him was. This has 
ever since seemed a kind of duty I had to do in the 
world before leaving it. 

And so, having on my hands some leisure at this 
time, and being bound to it by evident considerations, 
one of which ought to be especially sacred to me, I 
decide to fling down on paper some outline of what my 
recollections and reflections contain in reference to this 
most friendly, bright and beautiful human soul ; who 
walked with me for a season in this world, and remains 
to me very memorable while I continue in it. Gradually, 
if facts simple enough in themselves can be narrated as 
they came to pass, it will be seen what kind of man this 
was ; to what extent condemnable for imaginary heresy 
and other crimes, to what extent laudable and love- 
able for noble manful orthodoxy and other virtues ; — 
and whether the lesson his life had to teach us is not 



Chap. I. INTRODUCTORY. 9 

much the reverse of what the Religious Newspapers 
hitherto educe from it. 

Certainly it was not as a ( sceptic' that you could 
define him, whatever his definition might be. Belief, 
not doubt, attended him at all points of his progress ; 
rather a tendency to too hasty and headlong belief. Of 
all men he was the least prone to what you could call 
scepticism: diseased self- listenings, self- questionings, 
impotently painful dubitations, all this fatal nosology 
of spiritual maladies, so rife in our day, was eminently 
foreign to him. Quite on the other side lay Sterling's 
faults, such as they were. In fact, you could observe, 
in spite of his sleepless intellectual vivacity, he was 
not properly a thinker at all ; his faculties were of the 
active, not of the passive or contemplative sort. A 
brilliant improvisatore ; rapid in thought, in word and 
in act; everywhere the promptest and least hesitating 
of men. I likened him often, in my banterings, to 
sheet-lightning ; and reproachfully prayed that he would 
concentrate himself into a bolt, and rive the mountain- 
barriers for us, instead of merely playing on them and 
irradiating them. 

True, he had his ' religion ' to seek, and painfully 
shape together for himself, out of the abysses of con- 
flicting disbelief and sham-belief and bedlam delusion, 
now filling the world, as all men of reflection have ; and 
in this respect too, — more especially as his lot in the 
battle appointed for us all was, if you can understand it, 
victory and not defeat, — he is an expressive emblem of 
his time, and an instruction and possession to his contem- 
poraries. For, I say, it is by no means as a vanquished 
doubter that he figures in the memory of those who knew 
him ; but rather as a victorious believer, and under great 



10 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

difficulties a victorious doer. An example to us all, 
not of lamed misery, helpless spiritual bewilderment and 
sprawling despair, or any kind of drownage in the foul 
welter of our so-called religious or other controversies 
and confusions ; but of a swift and valiant vanquisher 
of all these ; a noble assertor of himself, as worker and 
speaker, in spite of all these. Continually, so far as he 
went, he was a teacher, by act and word, of hope, clear- 
ness, activity, veracity, and human courage and noble- 
ness : the preacher of a good gospel to all men, not of a 
bad to any man. The man, whether in priest's cassock 
or other costume of men, who is the enemy or hater of 
John Sterling, may assure himself that he does not yet 
know him, — that miserable differences of mere costume 
and dialect still divide him, whatsoever is worthy, catho- 
lic and perennial in him, from a brother soul who, more 
than most in his day, was his brother and not his ad- 
versary in regard to all that. 

Nor shall the irremediable drawback that Sterling 
was not current in the Newspapers, that he achieved 
neither what the world calls greatness nor what intrin- 
sically is such, altogether discourage me. What his 
natural size, and natural and accidental limits were, will 
gradually appear, if my sketching be successful. And 
I have remarked that a true delineation of the smallest 
man, and his scene of pilgrimage through life, is capable 
of interesting the greatest man ; that all men are to an 
unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a strange 
emblem of every man's ; and that Human Portraits, 
faithfully drawn, are of all pictures the welcomest on 
human walls. Monitions and moralities enough may 
lie in this small Work, if honestly written and honestly 
read ; — and, in particular, if any image of John Ster- 



Chap. I. INTRODUCTORY. 1 1 

ling and his Pilgrimage through our poor Nineteenth 
Century be one day wanted by the world, and they can 
find some shadow of a true image here, my swift scrib- 
bling (which shall be very swift and immediate) may 
prove useful by and by. 



CHAPTER II. 



BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 



John Sterling was born at Kaimes Castle, a kind of 
dilapidated baronial residence to which a small farm was 
then attached, rented by his Father, in the Isle of Bute, 
— on the 20th July, 1806. Both his parents were Irish 
by birth, Scotch by extraction ; and became, as he him- 
self did, essentially English by long residence and habit. 
Of John himself Scotland has little or nothing to claim 
except the birth and genealogy, for he left it almost 
before the years of memory; and in his mature days 
regarded it, if with a little more recognition and in- 
telligence, yet without more participation in any of 
its accents outward or inward, than others natives of 
Middlesex or Surrey, where the scene of his chief 
education lay. 

The climate of Bute is rainy, soft of temperature ; 
with skies of unusual depth and brilliancy, while the 
weather is fair. In that soft rainy climate, on that wild- 
wooded rocky coast, with its gnarled mountains and green 
silent valleys, with its seething rain-storms and many- 
sounding seas, was young Sterling ushered into his first 
schooling in this world. I remember one little anecdote 
his Father told me of those first years : One of the 
cows had calved ; young John, still in long-clothes, was 
permitted to go, holding by his father's hand, and look 
at the newly-arrived calf; a mystery which he surveyed 
with open intent eyes, and the silent exercise of all the 
scientific faculties he had; — very strange mystery in- 



Chap. II. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 13 

deed, this new arrival, and fresh denizen of our Universe : 
"Wull't eat a-body?" said John in his first practical 
Scotch, inquiring into the tendencies this mystery might 
have to fall upon a little fellow and consume him as pro- 
vision : "Will it eat one, Father?" — Poor little open- 
eyed John : the family long bantered him with this anec- 
dote ; and we, in far other years, laughed heartily on 
hearing it. — Simple peasant labourers, ploughers, house- 
servants, occasional fisher-people too ; and the sight of 
ships, and crops, and Nature's doings where Art has 
little meddled with her : this was the kind of schooling 
our young friend had, first of all ; on this bench of the 
grand world-school did he sit, for the first four years of 
his life. 

Edward Sterling his Father, a man who subse- 
quently came to considerable notice in the world, was 
originally of Waterford in Munster ; son of the Epis- 
copalian Clergyman there ; and chief representative of a 
family of some standing in those parts. Family founded, 
it appears, by a Colonel Robert Sterling, called also Sir 
Robert Sterling ; a Scottish Gustavus-Adolphus soldier, 
whom the breaking out of the Civil War had recalled 
from his Grerman campaignings, and had before long, 
though not till after some waverings on his part, attached 
firmly to the Duke of Ormond and to the King's Party 
in that quarrel. A little bit of genealogy, since it lies 
ready to my hand, gathered long ago out of wider studies, 
and pleasantly connects things individual and present 
with the dim universal crowd of things past, — may as 
well be inserted here as thrown away. 

This Colonel Robert designates himself Sterling f of 
Glorat ; ' I believe, a younger branch of the well-known 
Stirlings of Keir in Stirlingshire. It appears he pros- 



14 JOHN STERLING. Part I 






pered in his soldiering and other business, in those bad 
Ormond times ; being a man of energy, ardour and in- 
telligence, — probably prompt enough both with his word 
and with his stroke. There survives yet, in the Com- 
mons Journals,* dim notice of his controversies and ad- 
ventures ; especially of one controversy he had got into 
with certain victorious Parliamentary official parties, 
while his own party lay vanquished, during what was 
called the Ormond Cessation, or Temporary Peace made 
by Ormond with the Parliament in 1646: — in which 
controversy Colonel Robert, after repeated applications, 
journeyings to London, attendances upon committees, 
and such like, finds himself worsted, declared to be in 
the wrong ; and so vanishes from the Commons Journals. 
What became of him when Cromwell got to Ireland, 
and to Munster, I have not heard : his knighthood, dat- 
ing from the very year of Cromwell's Invasion (1649), 
indicates a man expected to do his best on the occasion : 
— as in all probability he did; had not Tredah Storm 
proved ruinous, and the neck of this Irish War been 
broken at once. Doubtless the Colonel Sir Robert fol- 
lowed or attended his Duke of Ormond into foreign parts, 
and gave up his management of Munster, while it was 
yet time : for after the Restoration we find him again, 
safe, and as was natural, flourishing with new splendour; 
gifted, recompensed with lands; — settled, in short, on 
fair revenues in those Munster regions. He appears 
to have had no children ; but to have left his property 
to William, a younger brother who had followed him 
into Ireland. From this William descends the family 
which, in the years we treat of, had Edward Sterling, 

* Commons Journals, iv. 15 (10th January 1644-5); and again v. 307 
&c, 498 (18th September 1647— 15th March 1647-8). 



Chap. II. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 15 

Father of our John, for its representative. And now 
enough of genealogy. 

Of Edward Sterling, Captain Edward Sterling as 
his title was, who in the latter period of his life became 
well-known in London political society, whom indeed 
all England, with a curious mixture of mockery and 
respect and even fear, knew well as " the Thunderer of 
the Times Newspaper," there were much to be said, did 
the present task and its limits permit. As perhaps it 
might, on certain terms ? What is indispensable let us 
not omit to say. The history of a man's childhood is 
the description of his parents and environment : this is 
his Particulate but highly important history, in those 
first times, while of articulate he has yet none. 

Edward Sterling had now just entered on his thirty- 
fourth year ; and was already a man experienced in for- 
tunes and changes. A native of Waterford in Munster, 
as already mentioned; born in the 'Deanery House of 
Waterford, 27th February, 1773,' say the registers. For 
his Father, as we learn, resided in the Deanery House, 
though he was not himself Dean, but only ' Curate of 
the Cathedral ' (whatever that may mean) ; he was withal 
rector of two other livings, and the Dean's friend, — 
friend indeed of the Dean's kinsmen the Beresfords ge- 
nerally ; whose grand house of Curraghmore, near by 
Waterford, was a familiar haunt of his and his children's. 
This reverend gentleman, along with his three livings 
and high acquaintanceships, had inherited political con- 
nexions ; — inherited especially a Government Pension, 
with survivorship for still one life beyond his own ; his 
father having been Clerk of the Irish House of Commons 
at the time of the Union, of which office the lost salary 



16 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

was compensated in this way. The Pension was of two 
hundred pounds ; and only expired with the life of 
Edward, John's Father, in 1847. There were, and still 
are, daughters of the family; but Edward was the only 
son; — descended, too, from the Scottish hero Wallace, 
as the old gentleman would sometimes admonish him ; 
his own wife, Edward's mother, being of that name, and 
boasting herself, as most Scotch Wallaces do, to have 
that blood in her veins. 

This Edward had picked up, at Waterford, and 
among the young Beresfords of Curraghmore and else- 
where, a thoroughly Irish form of character : fire and 
fervour, vitality of all kinds, in genial abundance ; but 
in a much more loquacious, ostentatious, much louder 
style than is freely patronised on this side of the Chan- 
nel. Of Irish accent in speech he had entirely divested 
himself, so as not to be traced by any vestige in that 
respect ; but his Irish accent of character, i % all manner 
of other more important respects, was very recognisable. 
An impetuous man, full of real energy, and immensely 
conscious of the same ; who transacted everything not 
with the minimum of fuss and noise, but with the maxi- 
mum : a very Captain Whirlwind, as one was tempted 
to call him. 

In youth, he had studied at Trinity College, Dublin; 
visited the Inns of Court here, and trained himself for 
the Irish Bar. To the Bar he had been duly called, and 
was waiting for the results, — when, in his twenty-fifth 
year, the Irish Rebellion broke out; whereupon the 
Irish Barristers decided to raise a corps of loyal Vo- 
lunteers, and a complete change introduced itself into 
Edward Sterling's way of life. For, naturally, he had 
joined the array of Volunteers ; — fought, I have heard, 



Chap. II. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 17 

f in three actions with the rebels ' (Vinegar Hill, for 
one) ; and doubtless fought well : but in the mess-rooms, 
among the young military and civil officials, with all of 
whom he was a favourite, he had acquired a taste for 
soldier life, and perhaps high hopes of succeeding in it : 
at all events, having a commission in the Cheshire Militia 
offered him, he accepted that ; altogether quitted the 
Bar, and became Captain Sterling thenceforth. From 
the Militia, it appears, he had volunteered with his Com- 
pany into the Line ; and, under some disappointments, 
and official delays of expected promotion, was continu- 
ing to serve as Captain there, ' Captain of the Eighth 
Battalion of Reserve,' say the Military Almanacks of 
1803, — in which year the quarters happened to be 
Derry, where new events awaited him. At a ball in 
Derry he met with Miss Hester Coningham, the queen 
of the scene, and of the fair world in Derry at that 
time. Thr- acquaintance, in spite of some opposition, 
grew with vigour, and rapidly ripened : and ' at Fehan 
' Church, Diocese of Derry,' where the Bride's father 
had a country-house, 'on Thursday, 5th April, 1804, 
' Hester Coningham, only daughter of John Coningham, 
- Esquire, Merchant in Derry, and of Elizabeth Camp- 
' bell his wife,' was wedded to Captain Sterling; she 
happiest, to him happiest, — as by Nature's kind law it 
is arranged. 

Mrs. Sterling, even in her later days, had still traces 
of the old beauty : then and always she was a woman 
of delicate, pious, affectionate character; exemplary as 
a wife, a mother and a friend. A refined female na- 
ture ; something tremulous in it, timid, and with a 
certain rural freshness still unweakened by long con- 
verse with the world. The tall slim figure, always of 

c 



18 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

a kind of quaker neatness ; the innocent anxious face, 
anxious bright hazle eyes ; the timid, yet gracefully 
cordial ways, the natural intelligence, instinctive sense 
and worth, were very characteristic. Her voice too ; 
with its something of soft querulousness, easily adapt- 
ing itself to a light thin-flowing style of mirth on oc- 
casion, was characteristic : she had retained her Ulster 
intonations, and was withal somewhat copious in speech. 
A fine tremulously sensitive nature, strong chiefly on 
the side of the affections, and the graceful insights and 
activities that depend on these : — truly a beautiful, 
much-suffering, much-loving house-mother. From her 
chiefly, as one could discern, John Sterling had derived 
the delicate aroma of his nature, its piety, clearness, 
sincerity ; as from his Father, the ready practical gifts, 
the impetuosities and the audacities, were also (though 
in strange new form) visibly inherited. A man was 
lucky to have such a Mother ; to have such Parents as 
both his were. 

Meanwhile the new Wife appears to have had, for 
the present, no marriage-portion ; neither was Edward 
Sterling rich, — according to his own ideas and aims, far 
from it. Of course he soon found that the fluctuating 
barrack-life, especially with no outlooks of speedy pro- 
motion, was little suited to his new circumstances : but 
how change it ? His father was now dead ; from' whom 
he had inherited the Speaker Pension of two hundred 
pounds ; but of available probably little or nothing more. 
The rents of the small family estate, I suppose, and 
other property, had gone to portion sisters. Two hun- 
dred pounds, and the pay of a marching Captain : with- 
in the limits of that revenue all plans of his had to 
restrict themselves at present. 






Chap. II. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 19 

He continued for some time longer in the Army; his 
wife undivided from him by the hardships of that way of 
life. Their first son Anthony (Captain Anthony Ster- 
ling, the only child who now survives) was born to them 
in this position, while lying at Dundalk, in January 
1805. Two months later, some eleven months after 
their marriage, the regiment was broken ; and Captain 
Sterling, declining to serve elsewhere on the terms offer- 
ed, and willingly accepting such decision of his doubts, 
was reduced to half-pay. This was the end of his sol- 
diering : some five or six years in all ; from which he 
had derived for life, among other things, a decided mili- 
tary bearing, whereof he was rather proud ; an incapa_ 
city for practising law; — and considerable uncertainty 
as to what his next course of life was now to be. 

For the present, his views lay towards farming : to 
establish himself, if not as country gentleman, which was 
an unattainable ambition, then at least as some kind of 
gentleman-farmer which had a flattering resemblance to 
that. Kaimes Castle with a reasonable extent of land, 
which, in his inquiries after farms, had turned up, was 
his first place of settlement in this new capacity ; and 
here, for some few months, he had established himself 
when John his second child was born. This was Captain 
Sterling's first attempt towards a fixed course of life ; 
not a very wise one, I have understood : — yet on the 
whole, who, then and there, could have pointed out to 
him a wiser ? 

A fixed course of life and activity he could never 
attain, or not till very late ; and this doubtless was 
among the important points of his destiny, and acted 
both on his own character and that of those who had 
to attend him on his wayfarings. 



CHAPTER III. 

SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN ; PARIS ; LONDON. 

Edward Sterling never shone in farming ; indeed I 
believe he never took heartily to it, or tried it except 
in fits. His Bute farm was, at best, a kind of apology 
for some far different ideal of a country establishment 
which could not be realised : practically a temporary 
landing-place from which he could make sallies and ex- 
cursions in search of some more generous field of enter- 
prise. Stormy brief efforts at energetic husbandry, at 
agricultural improvement and rapid field-labour, alter- 
nated with sudden flights to Dublin, to London, whi- 
thersoever any flush of bright outlook which he could 
denominate practical, or any gleam of hope which his im- 
patient ennui could represent as such, allured him. This 
latter was often enough the case. In wet hay-times and 
harvest- times, \the dripping out-door world, and loung- 
ing in-door one, in the absence of the master, offered 
far from a satisfactory appearance ! Here was, in fact, 
a man much imprisoned ; haunted, I doubt not, by de- 
mons enough ; though ever brisk and brave withal, — ira- 
cund, but cheerfully vigorous, opulent in wise or unwise 
hope. A fiery energetic soul consciously and uncon- 
sciously storming for deliverance into better arenas ; 
and this in a restless, rapid, impetuous, rather than in 
a strong, silent and deliberate way. 

In rainy Bute and the dilapidated Kaimes Castle, it 



Chap. III. SCHOOLS : LLANBLETinAN. 21 

was evident, there lay no Goshen for such a man. The 
lease, originally but for some three years and a half, 
drawing now to a close, he resolved to quit Bute ; had 
heard, I know not where, of an eligible cottage without 
farm attached, in the pleasant little village of Llanble- 
thian close by Cowbridge in Glamorganshire ; of this 
he took a lease, and thither with his family he moved in 
search of new fortunes. Glamorganshire was at least a 
better climate than Bute ; no groups of idle or of busy 
reapers could here stand waiting on the guidance of a 
master, for there was no farm here; — and among its 
other and probably its chief though secret advantages, 
Llanblethian was much more convenient both for Dub- 
lin and London than Kaimes Castle had been. 

The removal thither took place in the autumn of 
1809. Chief part of the journey (perhaps from Green- 
ock to Swansea or Bristol) was by sea : John, just turned 
of three years, could in after times remember nothing of 
this voyage ; Anthony, some eighteen months older, has 
still a vivid recollection of the grey splashing tumult, 
and dim sorrow, uncertainty, regret and distress he 
underwent: to him a ( dissolving view' which not only 
left its effect on the plate (as all views and dissolving- 
views doubtless do on that kind of ' plate'), but remained 
consciously present there. John, in the close of his 
twenty-first year, professes not to remember anything 
whatever of Bute ; his whole existence, in that earliest 
scene of it, had faded away from him : Bute also, with 
its shaggy mountains, moaning woods, and summer and 
winter seas, had been wholly a dissolving view for him, 
and had left no conscious impression, but only, like this 
voyage, an effect. 

Llanblethian hangs pleasantly, with its white cot- 



%% JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

tages, and orchard and other trees, on the western slope 
of a green hill ; looking far and wide over green mea- 
dows and little or bigger hills, in the pleasant plain of 
Glamorgan ; a short mile to the south of Cowbridge, to 
which smart little town it is properly a kind of suburb. 
Plain of Glamorgan, some ten miles wide and thirty or 
forty long, which they call the Vale of Glamorgan ; — 
though properly it is not quite a Yale, there being only 
one range of mountains to it, if even one : certainly the 
central Mountains of Wales do gradually rise, in a 
miscellaneous manner, on the north side of it ; but on 
the south are no mountains, not even land, only the 
Bristol Channel, and far off, the Hills of Devonshire, 
for boundary, — the " English Hills," as the natives call 
them, visible from every eminence in those parts. On 
such wide terms is it called Vale of Glamorgan. But 
called by whatever name, it is a most pleasant fruitful 
region ; kind to the native, interesting to the visitor. 
A waving grassy region ; cut with innumerable ragged 
lanes ; dotted with sleepy unswept human hamlets, old 
ruinous castles with their ivy and their daws, grey 
sleepy churches with their ditto ditto : for ivy every- 
where abounds ; and generally a rank fragrant vegeta- 
tion clothes all things ; hanging, in rude many-coloured 
festoons and fringed odoriferous tapestries, on your right 
and on your left, in every lane. A country kinder to 
the sluggard husbandman than any I have ever seen. 
For it lies all on limestone, needs no draining ; the soil, 
everywhere of handsome depth and finest quality, will 
grow good crops for you with the most imperfect tilling. 
At a safe distance of a day's riding lie the tartarean 
copperforges of Swansea, the tartarean ironforges of 
Merthyr ; their sooty battle far away, and not, at such 



Chap. III. SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN. 23 

safe distance, a defilement to the face of the earth and 
sky, but rather an encouragement to the earth at least ; 
encouraging the husbandman to plough better, if he 
only would. 

The peasantry seem indolent and stagnant, but 
peaceable and well-provided ; much given to Method- 
ism when they have any character; — for the rest an 
innocent good-humoured people, who all drink home- 
brewed beer, and have brown loaves of the most excel- 
lent homebaked bread. The native peasant village is 
not generally beautiful, though it might be, were it 
swept and trimmed ; it gives one rather the idea of 
sluttish stagnancy, — an interesting peep into the Welsh 
Paradise of Sleepy Hollow. Stones, old kettles, naves 
of wheels, all kinds of broken litter, with live pigs and 
etceteras, lie about the street : for as a rule no rubbish 
is removed, but waits patiently the action of mere natu- 
ral chemistry and accident ; if even a house is burnt or 
falls, you will find it there after half a century, only 
cloaked by the ever-ready ivy. Sluggish man seems 
never to have struck a pick into it ; his new hut is built 
close by on ground not encumbered, and the old stones 
are still left lying. 

This is the ordinary Welsh village ; but there are 
exceptions, where people of more cultivated tastes have 
been led to settle ; and Llanblethian is one of the more 
signal of these. A decidedly cheerful group of human 
homes, the greater part of them indeed belonging to 
persons of refined habits ; trimness, shady shelter, white- 
wash, neither conveniency nor decoration has been ne- 
glected here. Its effect from the distance on the east- 
ward is very pretty : you see it like a little sleeping 
cataract of white houses, with trees overshadowing and 



24b JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

fringing it ; and there the cataract hangs, and does not 
rush away from you. 

John Sterling spent his next five years in this 
locality. He did not again see it for a quarter of a 
century ; but retained, all his life, a lively remembrance 
of it; and, just in the end of his twenty-first year, 
among his earliest printed pieces, we find an elaborate 
and diffuse description of it and its relations to him, — 
part of which piece, in spite of its otherwise insignifi- 
cant quality, may find place here : 

* The fields on which I first looked, and the sands 
i which were marked by my earliest footsteps, are com- 
' pletely lost to my memory ; and of those ancient walls 
i among which I began to breathe, I retain no recol- 
1 lection more clear than the outlines of a cloud in a 

' moonless sky. But of L , the village where I 

' afterwards lived, I persuade myself that every line and 
c hue is more deeply and accurately fixed than those of 
' any spot I have since beheld, even though borne in 
e upon the heart by the association of the strongest feel- 
' ings. 

' My home was built upon the slope of a hill, with 
' a little orchard stretching down before it, and a garden 
' rising behind. At a considerable distance beyond and 
' beneath the orchard, a rivulet flowed through meadows 
' and turned a mill ; while, above the garden, the sum- 
* mit of the hill was crowned by a few grey rocks, from 
' which a yew-tree grew, solitary and bare. Extending 
' at each side of the orchard, toward the brook, two 
' scattered patches of cottages lay nestled among their 
( gardens ; and beyond this streamlet and the little mill 
e and bridge, another slight eminence arose, divided into 
c green fields, tufted and bordered with copsewood, and 



Chap. III. SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN. 25 

' crested by a ruined castle, contemporary, as was said, 
' with the Conquest. I know not whether these things 
' in truth made up a prospect of much beauty. Since 
' I was eight years old, I have never seen them ; but I 
1 well know that no landscape I have since beheld, no 
e picture of Claude or Salvator, gave me half the im- 
( pression of living, heartfelt, perfect beauty which fills 
1 my mind when I think of that green valley, that spark- 
1 ling rivulet, that broken fortress of dark antiquity, and 
' that hill with its aged yew and breezy summit, from 
' which I have so often looked over the broad stretch of 
' verdure beneath it, and the country-town, and church- 
' tower, silent and white beyond. 

' In that little town there was, and I believe is, a 
' school where the elements of human knowledge were 
' communicated to me, for some hours of every day, 
' during a considerable time. The path to it lay across 
' the rivulet and past the mill; from which point we 
i could either journey through the fields below the old 
' castle, and the wood which surrounded it, or along a 
1 road at the other side of the ruin, close to the gateway 
' of which it passed. The former track led through two 
' or three beautiful fields, the sylvan domain of the keep 
' on one hand^ and the brook on the other ; while an 
' oak or two, like giant warders advanced from the 
' wood, broke the sunshine of the green with a soft and 
' graceful shadow. How often, on my way to school, 
{ have I stopped beneath the tree to collect the fallen 
' acorns ; how often run down to the stream to pluck a 
1 branch of the hawthorn which hung over the water ! 
' The road which passed the castle joined, beyond these 
' fields, the path which traversed them. It took, I well 
' remember, a certain solemn and mysterious interest 



26 JOHN STERLING. Pari I. 

' from the ruin. The shadow of the archway, the dis- 
' colorisations of time on all the walls, the dimness of 
' the little thicket which encircled it, the traditions of 
' its immeasurable age, made St. Quentin's Castle a 
6 wonderful and awful fabric in the imagination of a 
e child ; and long after I last saw its mouldering rough- 
' ness, I never read of fortresses, or heights, or spectres, 
' or banditti, without connecting them with the one ruin 
' of my childhood. 

' It was close to this spot that one of the few adven- 

* tures occurred which marked, in my mind, my boyish 
' days with importance. When loitering beyond the 
1 castle, on the way to school, with a brother somewhat 
' older than myself, who was uniformly my champion 
( and protector, we espied a round sloe high up in the 
1 hedge-row. We determined to obtain it ; and I do 
1 not remember whether both of us, or only my brother, 
1 climbed the tree. However, when the prize was all 
' but reached, — and no alchymist ever looked more eager- 
1 ly for the moment of projection which was to give him 
1 immortality and omnipotence, — a gruff voice startled 
' us with an oath, and an order to desist ; and I well 
1 recollect looking back, for long after, with terror to 

* the vision of an old and ill-tempered farmer, armed 
' with a bill-hook, and vowing our decapitation ; nor did 
' I subsequently remember without triumph the elo- 
' quence whereby alone, in my firm belief, my brother 
1 and myself had been rescued from instant death. 

i At the entrance of the little town stood an old 
1 gateway, with a pointed arch and decaying battle- 
' ments. It gave admittance to the street which con- 
' tained the church, and which terminated in another 
' street, the principal one in the town of C . In 



Chap. III. SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN, 27 

this was situated the school to which I daily wended. 
I cannot now recall to mind the face of its good con- 
ductor, nor of any of his scholars ; but I have before 
me a strong general image of the interior of his estab- 
lishment. I remember the reverence with which I was 
wont to carry to his seat a well-thumbed duodecimo, 
the History of Greece by Oliver Goldsmith. I re- 
member the mental agonies T endured in attempting 
to master the art and mystery of penmanship ; a craft 
in which, alas, I remained too short a time under 

Mr. R to become as great a proficient as he made 

his other scholars, and which my awkwardness has 
prevented me from attaining in any considerable per- 
fection under my various subsequent pedagogues. 
But that which has left behind it a brilliant trait of 
light was the exhibition of what are called " Christ- 
mas pieces ;" things unknown in aristocratic semina- 
ries, but constantly used at the comparatively humble 
academy which supplied the best knowledge of read- 
ing, writing and arithmetic to be attained in that re- 
mote neighbourhood. 

' The long desks covered from end to end with those 
painted masterpieces, the Life of Robinson Crusoe, 
the Hunting of Chevy-Chase, the History of Jack 
the Giant-Killer, and all the little eager faces and 
trembling hands bent over these, and filling them up 
with some choice quotation, sacred or profane; — no, 
the galleries of art, the theatrical exhibitions, the re- 
views and processions, — which are only not childish 
because they are practised and admired by men instead 
of children, — all the pomps and vanities of great cities, 
have shewn me no revelation of glory such as did that 
crowded school-room the week before the Christmas 



28 JOHN STERLING. Pari I. 

' holidays. But these were the splendours of life. The 
e truest and the strongest feelings do not connect them- 
' selves with any scenes of gorgeous and gaudy magni- 
' flcence ; they are bound up in the remembrances of 
' home. 

1 The narrow orchard, with its grove of old apple- 
' trees, against one of which I used to lean, and while 
' I brandished a beanstalk, roar out with Fitzjames, 

" Come one, come all ; this rock shall fly 
From its firm base as soon as I ! " — 

1 while I was ready to squall at the sight of a cur, and 
f run valorously away from a casually approaching cow ; 
f the field close beside it, where I rolled about in sum- 
( mer among the hay ; the brook in which, despite of 
1 maid and mother, I waded by the hour; the garden 
' where I sowed flower-seeds, and then turned up the 
1 ground again and planted potatoes, and then rooted 
1 out the potatoes to insert acorns and apple-pips, and 
i at last, as may be supposed, reaped neither roses, nor 
' potatoes, nor oak-trees, nor apples ; the grass-plots on 
' which I played among those with whom I never can 
f play nor work again : all these are places and em- 
' ployments, — and, alas, playmates, — such as, if it were 
e worth while to weep at all, it would be worth weeping 
' that I enjoy no longer. 

' I remember the house where I first grew familiar 
' with peacocks ; and the mill-stream into which I once 
( fell ; and the religious awe wherewith I heard, in the 
' warm twilight, the psalm-singing around the house of 
1 the Methodist miller ; and the door-post against which 
{ I discharged my brazen artillery ; I remember the 
' window by which I sat while my mother taught me 
i French ; and the patch of garden which I dug for 



Chap. III. SCHOOLS : LLANBLETHIAN. 29 

' But her name is best left blank ; it was indeed writ in 
' water. These recollections are to me like the wealth 
* of a departed friend, a mournful treasure. But the 
6 public has heard enough of them ; to it they are worth- 
' less : they are a coin which only circulates at its true 
' value between the different periods of an individual's 
1 existence, and good for nothing but to keep up a com- 
' merce between boyhood and manhood. I have for 
' years looked forward to the possibility of visiting 

' L ; but I am told that it is a changed village ; 

■ and not only has man been at work, but the old yew 
' on the hill has fallen, and scarcely a low stump re- 
'■ mains of the tree which I delighted in childhood to 
' think might have furnished bows for the Norman 
' archers.'* 

In Cowbridge is some kind of free school, or gram- 
mar-school, of a certain distinction ; and this to Captain 
Sterling was probably a motive for settling in the neigh- 
bourhood of it with his children. Of this however, as 
it turned out, there was no use made : the Sterling- 
family, during its continuance in those parts, did not 
need more than a primary school. The worthy master 
who presided over these Christmas galas, and had the 
honour to teach John Sterling his reading and writing, 
was an elderly Mr. Reece of Cowbridge, who still (in 
1851) survives, or lately did; and is still remembered 
by his old pupils as a worthy, ingenious and kindly man, 
" who wore drab breeches and white stockings." Be- 
yond the Reece sphere of tuition John Sterling did not 
go in this locality. 

In fact the Sterling household was still fluctuating ; 

* Literary Chronicle, New Series; London, Saturday, 21st June 1828. 
Art. 11. 



30 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

the problem of a task for Edward Sterling's powers, 
and of anchorage for his affairs in any sense, was rest- 
lessly struggling to solve itself, but was still a good way 
from being solved. Anthony, in revisiting these scenes 
with John in 1839, mentions going to the spot "where 
" we used to stand with our Father, looking out for the 
" arrival of the London mail :" a little chink through 
which is disclosed to us a big restless section of a human 
life. The Hill of Welsh Llanblethian, then, is like the 
mythic Caucasus in its degree (as indeed all hills and 
habitations where men sojourn are) ; and here too, on 
a small scale, is a Prometheus Chained ? Edward Ster- 
ling, I can well understand, was a man to tug at the 
chains that held him idle in those the prime of his years ; 
and to ask restlessly, yet not in anger and remorse, so 
much as in hope, locomotive speculation, and ever-new 
adventure and attempt, Is there no task nearer my own 
natural size, then ? So he looks out from the Hill-side 
1 for the arrival of the London mail ;' thence hurries 
into Cowbridge to the Post-office ; and has a wide web, 
of threads and gossamers, upon his loom, and many 
shuttles flying, in this world. 

By the Marquis of Bute's appointment he had, very 
shortly after his arrival in that region, become Adjutant 
of the Glamorganshire Militia, ' Local Militia' I sup- 
pose ; and was, in this way, turning his military capa- 
bilities to some use. The office involved pretty fre- 
quent absences, in Cardiff and elsewhere. This doubt- 
less was a welcome outlet, though a small one. He had 
also begun to try writing, especially on public subjects ; 
a much more copious outlet, — which indeed, gradually 
widening itself, became the final solution for him. 
Of the year 1811 we have a Pamphlet of his, entitled 



Chap. III. SCHOOLS: LLANBLETHIAN. 31 

Military Reform; this is the second edition, * dedicated 
to the Duke of Kent ;' the first appears to have come out 
the year before, and had thus attained a certain notice, 
which of course was encouraging. He now furthermore 
opened a correspondence with the Times Newspaper ; 
wrote to it, in 1812, a series of Letters under the sig- 
nature Fetus : voluntary Letters I suppose, without pay- 
ment or pre-engagement, one successfulLetter calling out 
another ; till Vetus and his doctrines came to be a dis- 
tinguishable entity, and the business amounted to some- 
thing. Out of my own earliest Newspaper reading, I can^ 
remember the name Vetus , as a kind of editorial hacklog 
on which able editors were wont to chop straw now and 
then. Nay the Letters were collected and reprinted ; 
both this first series, of 1812, and then a second of next 
year : two very thin, very dim-coloured cheap octavos ; 
stray copies of which still exist, and may one day become 
distillable into a drop of History (should such be wanted 
of our poor * Scavenger Age' in time coming), though 
the reading of them has long ceased in this generation.* 
The first series, we perceive, had even gone to a second 
edition. The tone, wherever one timidly glances into 
this extinct cockpit, is trenchant and emphatic : the 
name of Vetus, strenuously fighting there, had become 
considerable in the talking political world ; and, no 
doubt, was especially of mark, as that of a writer who 
might otherwise be important, with the proprietors of 
the Times. The connexion continued ; widened and 
deepened itself, — in a slow tentative manner; passing 
naturally from voluntary into remunerated ; and indeed 

* ' The Letters of Vetus from March 10 to May 10, 1812' (second 
edition, London, 1812): Ditto, ' Part III., with a Preface and Notes' 
(ibid. 1814). 



32 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

proving more and more to be the true ultimate arena, 
and battlefield and seedfield, for the exuberant impe- 
tuosities and faculties of this man. 

What the Letters of Fetus treated of I do not know ; 
doubtless they ran upon Napoleon, Catholic Emanci- 
pation, true methods of national defence, of effective 
foreign Antigallicism, and of domestic ditto ; which 
formed the staple of editorial speculation at that time. I 
have heard in general that Captain Sterling, then and af- 
terwards, advocated ' the Marquis of Wellesley's policy ;' 
but that also, what it was, I have forgotten, and the 
world has been willing to forget. Enough, the heads of 
the Times establishment, perhaps already the Marquis 
of Weliesley and other important persons, had their eye 
on this writer ; and it began to be surmised by him that 
here at last was the career he had been seeking. 

Accordingly, in 1814, when victorious Peace unex- 
pectedly arrived, and the gates of the Continent after 
five-and-twenty years of fierce closure were suddenly 
thrown open ; and the hearts of all English and Euro- 
pean men awoke staggering as if from a nightmare sud- 
denly removed, and ran hither and thither, — Edward 
Sterling also determined on a new adventure, that of 
crossing to Paris, and trying what might lie in store for 
him. For curiosity, in its idler sense, there was evi- 
dently pabulum enough. But he had hopes moreover 
of learning much that might perhaps avail him after- 
wards ; — hopes withal, I have understood, of getting to 
be Foreign Correspondent of the Times Newspaper, and 
so adding to his income in the meanwhile. He left 
Llanblethian in May ; dates from Dieppe the 27th of 
that month. He lived in occasional contact with Parisian 






Chap. III. SCHOOLS : PARIS. 33 

notabilities (all of them except Madame de Stael forgot- 
ten now), all summer, diligently surveying his ground ; 
— returned for his family, who were still in Wales but 
ready to move, in the beginning of August ; took them 
immediately across with him ; a house in the neighbour- 
hood of Paris, in the pleasant village of Passy at once 
town and country, being now ready ; and so, under 
foreign skies, again set up his household there. 

Here was a strange new ' school' for our friend 
John now in his eighth year ! Out of which the little 
Anthony and he drank doubtless at all pores, vigor- 
ously as they had done in no school before. A change 
total and immediate. Somniferous green Llanblethian 
has suddenly been blotted out ; presto, here are wakeful 
Passy and the noises of paved Paris instead. Innocent 
ingenious Mr. Reece in drab breeches and white stock- 
ings, he with his mild Christmas galas and peaceable 
rules of Dilworth and Butterworth, has given place to 
such a saturnalia of panoramic, symbolic, and other 
teachers and monitors, addressing all the five senses at 
once. Who John's express tutors were, at Passy, I never 
heard ; nor indeed, especially in his case, was it much 
worth inquiring. To him and to all of us, the expressly 
appointed schoolmasters and schoolings we get are as 
nothing, compared with the unappointed incidental and 
continual ones, whose school-hours are all the days and 
nights of our existence, and whose lessons, noticed or 
unnoticed, stream in upon us with every breath we 
draw. Anthony says they attended a French school, 
though only for about three months ; and he well re- 
members the last scene of it, { the boys shouting Vive 
VEmpereur, when Napoleon came back.' 

Of John Sterling's express schooling, perhaps the 



34 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

most important feature, and by no means a favourable 
one to him, was the excessive fluctuation that prevailed 
in it. Change of scene, change of teacher both express 
and implied, was incessant with him ; and gave his 
young life a nomadic character, — which surely, of all 
the adventitious tendencies that could have been im- 
pressed upon him, so volatile, swift and airy a being as 
him, was the one he needed least. His gentle pious- 
hearted Mother, ever watching over him in all outward 
changes, and assiduously keeping human pieties and 
good affections alive in him, was probably the best 
counteracting element in his lot. And on the whole, 
have we not all to run our chance in that respect ; and 
take, the most victoriously we can, such schooling as 
pleases to be attainable in our year and place? Not 
very victoriously, the most of us ! A wise well-calcu- 
lated breeding of a young genial soul in this world, or 
alas of any young soul in it, lies fatally over the horizon 
in these epochs ! — This French scene of things, a grand 
school of its sort, and also a perpetual banquet for the 
young soul, naturally captivated John Sterling ; he said 
afterwards, ( New things and experiences here were pour- 
* ed upon his mind and sense, not in streams, but in a 
i Niagara cataract.' This too, however, was but a scene ; 
lasted only some six or seven months ; and in the spring 
of the next year, terminated as abruptly as any of the 
rest could do. 

For in the spring of the next year, Napoleon abruptly 
emerged from Elba ; and set all the populations of the 
world in motion, in a strange manner ; — set the Sterling 
household afloat, in particular ; the big European tide 
rushing into all smallest creeks, at Passy and elsewhere. 
In brief, on the 20th of March 1815, the family had to 



Chap. III. SCHOOLS : LONDON. 35 

shift, almost to fly, towards home and the seacoast ; and 
for a day or two, were under apprehension of being de- 
tained and not reaching home. Mrs. Sterling, with her 
children and effects, all in one big carriage with two 
horses, made the journey to Dieppe ; in perfect safety, 
though in continual tremor: here they were joined by 
Captain Sterling, who had staid behind at Paris to see 
the actual advent of Napoleon, and to report what the 
aspect of affairs was, "Downcast looks of citizens, with 
fierce saturnalian acclaim of soldiery :" after which they 
proceeded together to London without farther appre- 
hension ; — there to witness, in due time, the tarbarrels 
of Waterloo, and other phenomena that followed. 

Captain Sterling never quitted London as a residence 
any more ; and indeed was never absent from it, except 
on autumnal or other excursions of a few weeks, till the 
end of his life. Nevertheless his course there was as 
yet by no means clear ; nor had his relations with the 
heads of the Times, or with other high heads, assumed 
a form which could be called definite, but were hanging 
as a cloudy maze of possibilities, firm substance not yet 
divided from shadow. It continued so for some years. 
The Sterling household shifted twice or thrice to new 
streets or localities, — Russel Square or Queen Square, 
Blackfriars Road, and longest at the Grove, Blackheath, 
— before the vapours of Wellesley promotions and such 
like slowly sank as useless precipitate, and the firm rock, 
which was definite employment, ending in lucrative co- 
proprietorship and more and more important connexion 
with the Times Newspaper, slowly disclosed itself. 

These changes of place naturally brought changes in 
John Sterling's schoolmasters : nor were domestic trage- 



36 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

dies wanting, still more important to him. New bro- 
thers and sisters had been born; two little brothers 
more, three little sisters he had in all ; some of whom 
came to their eleventh year beside him, some passed 
away in their second or fourth : but from his ninth to 
his sixteenth year they all died; and in 1821 only 
Anthony and John were left.* How many tears, and 
passionate pangs, and soft infinite regrets ; such as are 
appointed to all mortals ! In one year, I find, indeed 
in one half-year, he lost three little playmates, two of 
them within one month. His own age was not yet 
quite twelve. For one of these three, for little Edward, 
his next younger, who died now at the age of nine, Mr. 
Hare records that John copied out, in large school hand, 
a History of Valentine and Orson, to beguile the poor 
child's sickness, which ended in death soon, leaving a 
sad cloud on John. 

Of his grammar and other schools, which, as I said, 
are hardly worth enumerating in comparison, the most 
important seems to have been a Dr. Burney's at Green- 
wich ; a large day-school and boarding-school, where 
Anthony and John gave their attendance for a year or 

* Here, in a Note, is the tragic little Register, with what indications 
for us may lie in it : 

1. Robert Sterling died, 4th June 1815, at Queen Square, in his fourth 

year (John being now nine). 

2. Elizabeth died, 12th March 1818, at Blackfriars Road, in her second 

year. 

3. Edward, 30th March 1818 (same place, same month and year), in his 

ninth. 

4. Hester, 21st July 1818 (three months later), at Blackheath, in her 

eleventh. 

5. Catherine Hester Elizabeth, 16th January 1821, in Seymour Street. 



CHAr. III. SCHOOLS: LONDON. Si 

two (1818, — 19) from Blackheath. f John frequently 
' did themes for the boys,' says Anthony, * and for my- 
' self when I was aground.' His progress in all school 
learning was certain to be rapid, if he even moderately 
took to it. A lean, tallish, loose-made boy of twelve ; 
strange alacrity, rapidity and joyous eagerness looking 
out of his eyes, and of all his ways and movements. I 
have a Picture of him at this stage ; a little Portrait, 
which carries its verification with it. In manhood too, 
the chief expression of his eyes and physiognomy was 
what I might call alacrity, cheerful rapidity. You could 
see, here looked forth a soul which was winged ; which 
dwelt in hope and action, not in hesitation or fear. 
Anthony says, he was ' an affectionate and gallant kind 
' of boy, adventurous and generous, daring to a singular 
' degree.' Apt enough withal to be i petulant now and 
then;' on the whole, ' very self-willed ;' doubtless not 
a little discursive in his thoughts and ways, and ' diffi- 
cult to manage.' 

I rather think Anthony, as the steadier, more sub- 
stantial boy, was the Mother's favourite ; and that John, 
though the quicker and cleverer, perhaps cost her many 
anxieties. Among the Papers given me, is an old 
browned half-sheet in stiff school hand, unpunctuated, 
occasionally ill spelt, — John Sterling's earliest remain- 
ing Letter, — which gives record of a crowning escapade 
of his, the first and the last of its kind ; and so may be 
inserted here. A very headlong adventure on the boy's 
part ; so hasty and so futile, at once audacious and im- 
practicable ; emblematic of much that befel in the his- 
tory of the man ! 



38 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

' To Mrs. Sterling, Blackheath. 

' September 21st, 1818. 

' Dear Mamma, — I am now at Dover, where I 
( arrived this morning about seven o'clock. When you 
( thought I was going to church, I went down the Kent 
( Road, and walked on till I came to Gravesend, which 
' is upwards of twenty miles from Blackheath ; at about 
' seven o'clock in the evening, without having eat any- 
1 thing the whole time. I applied to an inkeeper (sic) 
i there, pretending that I had served a haberdasher in 
e London, who left of (sic) business, and turned me 
' away. He believed me ; and got me a passage in the 
' coach here, for I said that I had an Uncle here, and 
' that my Father and Mother were dead ; — when I wan- 
' dered about the quays for some time, till I met Captain 
' Keys, whom I asked to give me a passage to Boulogne; 
' which he promised to do, and took me home to break- 
' fast with him : but Mrs. Keys questioned me a good 
i deal ; when I not being able to make my story good, 
i I was obliged to confess to her that I had run away 
' from you. Captain Keys says that he will keep me at 
' his house till you answer my letter. 

' J. Sterling.' 

Anthony remembers the business well ; but can 
assign no origin to it, — some penalty, indignity or 
cross put suddenly on John, which the hasty John con- 
sidered unbearable. His Mother's inconsolable weep- 
ing, and then his own astonishment at such a culprit's 
being forgiven, are all that remain with Anthony. The 
steady historical style of the young runaway of twelve, 
narrating merely, not in the least apologising, is also 
noticeable. 



Chap. III. SCHOOLS : LONDON. 39 

This was some six months after his little brother Ed- 
ward's death ; three months after that of Hester, his 
little sister next in the family series to him : troubled 
days for the poor Mother in that small household on 
Blackheath, as there are for Mothers in so many house- 
holds in this world ! I have heard that Mrs. Sterling 
passed much of her time alone, at this period. Her hus- 
band's pursuits, with his Wellesleys and the like, often 
carrying him into Town and detaining him late there, 
she would sit among her sleeping children, such of them 
as death had still spared, perhaps thriftily plying her 
needle, full of mournful affectionate night-thoughts, — 
apprehensive too, in her tremulous heart, that the head 
of the house might have fallen among robbers in his way 
homeward. 






CHAPTER IV. 

universities: Glasgow; Cambridge. 

At a later stage, John had some instruction from a Dr. 
Waite at Blackheath ; and lastly, the family having now 
removed into Town, to Seymour Street in the fashion- 
able region there, he ' read for a while with Dr. Trollope, 
Master of Christ's Hospital;' which ended his school 
history. 

In this his ever -changing course, from Reece at 
Cowbridge to Trollope in Christ's, which was passed 
so nomadically, under ferulas of various colour, the 
boy had, on the whole, snatched successfully a fair 
share of what was going. Competent skill in con- 
struing Latin, I think also an elementary knowledge 
of Greek ; add ciphering to a small extent, Euclid 
perhaps in a rather imaginary condition; a swift but 
not very legible or handsome penmanship, and the 
copious prompt habit of employing it in all manner of 
unconscious English prose composition, or even occa- 
sionally in verse itself: this, or something like this, he 
had gained from his grammar-schools ; this is the most 
of what they offer to the poor young soul in general, in 
these indigent times. The express schoolmaster is not 
equal to much at present, — while the wzexpress, for 
good or for evil, is so busy with a poor little fellow ! 
Other departments of schooling had been infinitely more 



Chap. IV. UNIVERSITIES : GLASGOW. 41 

productive, for our young friend, than the gerundgrind- 
ing one. A voracious reader I believe he all along was; 
— had ' read the whole Edinburgh Review' in these boy- 
ish years, and out of the circulating libraries one knows 
not what cartloads; wading like Ulysses towards his 
palace ' through infinite dung.' A voracious observer 
and participator in all things he likewise all along was ; 
and had had his sights, and reflections, and sorrows and 
adventures, from Kairnes Castle onward, — and had gone 
at least to Dover on his own score. Puer honce spei, as 
the school-albums say ; a boy of whom much may be 
hoped ? Surely, in many senses, yes. A frank veracity 
is in him, truth and courage, as the basis of all ; and 
of wild gifts and graces there is abundance. I figure 
him a brilliant, swift, voluble, affectionate and pleasant 
creature ; out of whom, if it were not that symptoms of 
delicate health already shew themselves, great things 
might be made. Promotions at least, especially in this 
country and epoch of parliaments and eloquent palavers, 
are surely very possible for such a one ! 

Being now turned of sixteen, and the family econo- 
mics getting yearly more propitious and flourishing, he, 
as his brother had already been, was sent to Glasgow 
University, in which city their Mother had connexions. 
His brother and he were now all that remained of the 
young family; much attached to one another in their 
College years as afterwards. Glasgow however was not 
properly their College scene: here, except that they 
had some tuition from Mr. Jacobson, then a senior fellow 
student, now (1851) the learned editor of St. Basil, and 
Regius Professor of Divinity in Oxford, who continued 
ever afterwards a valued intimate of John's, I find no- 



42 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

thing special recorded of them. The Glasgow curricu- 
lum, for John especially, lasted but one year ; who, after 
some farther tutorage from Mr. Jacobson or Dr. Trollope, 
was appointed for a more ambitious sphere of educa- 
tion. 

In the beginning of his nineteenth year, f in the 
autumn of 1824,' he went to Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. His brother Anthony, who had already been 
there a year, had just quitted this Establishment, and 
entered on a military life under good omens ; I think, 
at Dublin under the Lord Lieutenant's patronage, to 
whose service he was, in some capacity, attached. The 
two brothers, ever in company hitherto, parted roads at 
this point ; and, except on holiday visits and by frequent 
correspondence, did not again live together ; but they 
continued in a true fraternal attachment while life lasted, 
and I believe never had any even temporary estrange- 
ment, or on either side a cause for such. The family, 
as I said, was now, for the last three years, reduced to 
these two ; the rest of the young ones, with their laugh- 
ter and their sorrows, all gone. The parents otherwise 
were prosperous in outward circumstances ; the Father's 
position more and more developing itself into affluent 
security, an agreeable circle of acquaintance, and a cer- 
tain real influence, though of a peculiar sort, according 
to his gifts for work in this world. 

Sterling's Tutor at Trinity College was Julius Hare, 
now the distinguished Archdeacon of Lewes; — who soon 
conceived a great esteem for him, and continued ever 
afterwards, in looser or closer connexion, his loved and 
loving friend. As the Biographical and Editorial work 
above alluded to abundantly evinces. Mr. Hare cele- 



Chap. IV. UNIVERSITIES : CAMBRIDGE. 43 

brates the wonderful and beautiful gifts, the sparkling 
ingenuity, ready logic, eloquent utterance, and noble 
generosities and pieties of his pupil ; — records in parti- 
cular how once, on a sudden alarm of fire in some neigh- 
bouring College edifice while his lecture was proceeding, 
all hands rushed out to help ; how the undergraduates 
instantly formed themselves in lines from the fire to the 
river, and in swift continuance kept passing buckets as 
was needful, till the enemy was visibly fast yielding, — 
when Mr. Hare, going along the line, was astonished to 
find Sterling at the river end of it, standing up to his 
waist in water, deftly dealing with the buckets as they 
came and went. You in the river, Sterling ; you with 
your coughs, and dangerous tendencies of health ! — 
" Somebody must be in it," answered Sterling : " why not 
I, as well as another?" Sterling's friends may remem- 
ber many traits of that kind. The swiftest in all things, 
he was apt to be found at the head of the column, whi- 
thersoever the march might be : if towards any brunt of 
danger, there was he surest to be at the head ; and of 
himself and his peculiar risks or impediments he was 
negligent at all times, even to an excessive and plainly 
unreasonable degree. 

Mr. Hare justly refuses him the character of an 
exact scholar, or technical proficient at any time in 
either of the ancient literatures. But he freely read in 
Greek and Latin, as in various modern languages ; and 
in all fields, in the classical as well, his lively faculty of 
recognition and assimilation had given him large booty 
in proportion to his labour. One cannot under any cir- 
cumstances conceive of Sterling as a steady dictionary phi- 
lologue, historian, or archaeologist ; nor did he here, nor 
could he well, attempt that course. At the same time, 



44 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

Greek and the Greeks being here before him, he could 
not fail to gather somewhat from it, to take some hue 
and shape from it. Accordingly there is, to a singular 
extent, especially in his early writings, a certain tinge 
of Grecism and Heathen Classicality traceable in him ; 
— Classicality, indeed, which does not satisfy one's sense 
as real or truly living, but which glitters with a certain 
genial, if perhaps almost meretricious half -japa?inish 
splendour, — greatly distinguishable from mere gerund- 
grinding, and death in longs and shorts. If Classicality 
mean the practical conception, or attempt to conceive, 
what human life was in the epoch called classical, — 
perhaps few or none of Sterling's contemporaries in that 
Cambridge establishment carried away more of available 
Classicality than even he. 

But here, as in his former schools, his studies and 
inquiries, diligently prosecuted I believe, were of the 
most discursive wide-flowing character; not steadily 
advancing along beaten roads towards College honours, 
but pulsing out with impetuous irregularity now on this 
tract, now on that, towards whatever spiritual Delphi 
might promise to unfold the mystery of this world, and 
announce to him what was, in our new day, the authen- 
tic message of the gods. His speculations, readings, in- 
ferences, glances and conclusions were doubtless suffi- 
ciently encyclopedic ; his grand tutors the multifarious 
set of Books he devoured. And perhaps, — as is the 
singular case in most schools and educational establish- 
ments of this unexampled epoch, — it was not the ex- 
press set of arrangements in this or any extant University 
that could essentially forward him, but only the implied 
and silent ones ; less in the prescribed ' course of study,' 
which seems to tend nowhither, than, — if you will con- 



Chap. IV. UNIVERSITIES I CAMBRIDGE. 45 

sider it, — in the generous (not ungenerous) rebellion 
against said prescribed course, and the voluntary spirit of 
endeavour and adventure excited thereby, does help lie 
for a brave youth in such places. Curious to consider. 
The fagging, the illicit boating, and the things forbidden 
by the schoolmaster, — these, I often notice in my Eton 
acquaintances, are the things that have done them good; 
these, and not their inconsiderable or considerable know- 
ledge of the Greek accidence almost at all! What is 
Greek accidence, compared to Spartan discipline, if it 
can be had ? That latter is a real and grand attainment. 
Certainly, if rebellion is unfortunately needful, and you 
can rebel in a generous manner, several things may be 
acquired in that operation, — rigorous mutual fidelity, 
reticence, stedfastness, mild stoicism, and other virtues 
far transcending your Greek accidence. Nor can the 
un wisest ' prescribed course of study' be considered quite 
useless, if it have incited you to try nobly on all sides 
for a course of your own. A singular condition of 
Schools and High-schools, which have come down, in 
their strange old clothes and ' courses of study,' from 
the monkish ages into this highly unmonkish one ; — 
tragical condition, at which the intelligent observer 
makes deep pause ! 

One benefit, not to be dissevered from the most 
obsolete University still frequented by young ingenuous 
living souls, is that of manifold collision and communi- 
cation with the said young souls ; which, to every one 
of these coevals, is undoubtedly the most important 
branch of breeding for him. In this point, as the 
learned Huber has insisted,* the two English Univer- 
sities, — their studies otherwise being granted to be 
* History of the English Universities. (Translated from the German.) 



46 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

nearly useless, and even ill done of their kind, — far 
excel all other Universities : so valuable are the rules 
of human behaviour which from of old have tacitly es- 
tablished themselves there ; so manful, with all its sad 
drawbacks, is the style of English character, ' frank, 
simple, rugged and yet courteous,' which has tacitly 
but imperatively got itself sanctioned and prescribed 
there. Such, in full sight of Continental and other 
Universities, is Huber's opinion. Alas, the question of 
University Reform goes deep at present; deep as the 
world; — and the real University of these new epochs 
is yet a great way from us ! Another judge in whom I 
have confidence declares further, That, of these two Uni- 
versities, Cambridge is decidedly the more catholic (not 
Roman catholic, but Human catholic) in its tendencies 
and habitudes ; and that in fact, of all the miserable 
Schools and High-schools in the England of these years, 
he, if reduced to choose from them, would choose Cam- 
bridge as a place of culture for the young idea. So that, 
in these bad circumstances, Sterling had perhaps rather 
made a hit than otherwise ? 

Sterling at Cambridge had undoubtedly a wide and 
rather genial circle of comrades ; and could not fail to 
be regarded and beloved by many of them. Their life 
seems to have been an ardently speculating and talking 
one ; by no means excessively restrained within limits ; 
and, in the more adventurous heads like Sterling's, 
decidedly tending towards the latitudinarian in most 
things. They had among them a Debating Society 
called The Union ; where on stated evenings was much 
logic, and other spiritual fencing and ingenuous colli- 
sion, — probably of a really superior quality in that kind ; 



Chap. IV. UNIVERSITIES : CAMBRIDGE. 47 

for not a few of the then disputants have since proved 
themselves men of parts, and attained distinction in the 
intellectual walks of life. Frederic Maurice, Richard 
Trench, John Kemble, Spedding, Venables, Charles Bul- 
ler, Richard Milnes and others: — I have heard that in 
speaking and arguing, Sterling was the acknowledged 
chief in this Union Club ; and that ' none even came 
near him, except the late Charles Buller,' whose dis- 
tinction in this and higher respects was also already 
notable. 

The questions agitated seem occasionally to have 
touched on the political department, and even on the 
ecclesiastical. I have heard one trait of Sterling's elo- 
quence, which survived on the wings of grinning rumour, 
and had evidently borne upon Church Conservatism in 
some form : " Have they not," — or perhaps it was, Has 
she (the Church) not, — " sl black dragoon in every pa- 
" rish, on good pay and rations, horse-meat and man's- 
" meat, to patrol and battle for these things ?" The 
' black dragoon,' which naturally at the moment ruffled 
the general young imagination into stormy laughter, 
points towards important conclusions in respect to Ster- 
ling at this time. I conclude he had, with his usual 
alacrity and impetuous daring, frankly adopted the anti- 
superstitious side of things ; and stood scornfully pre- 
pared to repel all aggressions or pretensions from the 
opposite quarter. In short, that he was already, what 
afterwards there is no doubt about his being, at all 
points a Radical, as the name or nickname then went. 
In other words, a young ardent soul looking with hope 
and joy into a world which was infinitely beautiful to 
him, though overhung with falsities and foul cobwebs 
as world never was before ; overloaded, overclouded, to 



48 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

the zenith and the nadir of it, by incredible uncredited 
traditions, solemnly sordid hypocrisies, and beggarly de- 
liriums old and new ; which latter class of objects it was 
clearly the part of every noble heart to expend all its 
lightnings and energies in burning up without delay, and 
sweeping into their native Chaos out of such a Cosmos 
as this. Which process, it did not then seem to him 
could be very difficult; or attended with much other 
than heroic joy, and enthusiasm of victory or of battle, 
to the gallant operator, in his part of it. This was, 
with modifications such as might be, the humour and 
creed of College Radicalism five-and-twenty years ago. 
Rather horrible at that time ; seen to be not so horrible 
now, at least to have grown very universal, and to need 
no concealment now. The natural humour and atti- 
tude, we may well regret to say, — and honourable not 
dishonourable, for a brave young soul such as Sterling's, 
in those years in those localities ! 

I do not find that Sterling had, at that stage, adopted 
the then prevalent Utilitarian theory of human things. 
But neither, apparently, had he rejected it; still less 
did he yet at all denounce it with the damnatory vehe- 
mence we were used to in him at a later period. Pro- 
bably he, so much occupied with the negative side of 
things, had not yet thought seriously of any positive 
basis for his world ; or asked himself, too earnestly, 
What then is the noble rule of living for a man ? In 
this world so eclipsed and scandalously overhung with 
fable and hypocrisy, what is the eternal fact, on which 
a man may front the Destinies and the Immensities ? 
The day for such questions, sure enough to come in his 
case, was still but coming. Sufficient for this day be 
the work thereof; that of blasting into merited annihi- 



Chap. IV. UNIVERSITIES : CAMBRIDGE. 49 

lation the innumerable and immeasurable recognised 
deliriums, and extirpating or coercing to the due pitch 
those legions of * black dragoons/ of all varieties and 
purposes, who patrol, with horse-meat and man's-meat, 
this afflicted earth, so hugely to the detriment of it. 

Sterling, it appears, after above a year of Trinity 
College, followed his friend Maurice into Trinity Hall, 
with the intention of taking a degree in Law ; which 
intention, like many others with him, came to nothing ; 
and in 1827 he left Trinity Hall and Cambridge alto- 
gether; here ending, after two years, his brief Uni- 
versity life. 



CHAPTER V. 



A PROFESSION. 



Here then is a young soul, brought to the years of legal 
majority, furnished from his training-schools with such 
and such shining capabilities, and ushered on the scene 
of things, to inquire practically, What he will do there ? 
Piety is in the man, noble human valour, bright intelli- 
gence, ardent proud veracity; light and fire, in none 
of their many senses, wanting for him, but abundantly 
bestowed: a kingly kind of man; — whose 'kingdom,' 
however, in this bewildered place and epoch of the world 
will probably be difficult to find and conquer ! 

For, alas, the world, as we said, already stands con- 
victed to this young soul of being an untrue, unblessed 
world; its high dignitaries many of them phantasms 
and players' -masks; its worthships and worships un- 
worshipful : from Dan to Beersheba, a mad world, my 
masters. And surely we may say, and none will now 
gainsay, this his idea of the world at that epoch was 
nearer to the fact than at most other epochs it has 
been. Truly, in all times and places, the young ardent 
soul that enters on this world with heroic purpose, 
with veracious insight, and the yet unclouded i in- 
spiration of the Almighty' which has given us our 
intelligence, will find this world a very mad one : why 
else is he, with his little outfit of heroisms and inspira- 



Chap. V. A PROFESSION. 51 

tions, come hither into it, except to make it diligently 
a little saner ? Of him there would have been no need, 
had it been quite sane. This is true ; this will, in all 
centuries and countries, be true. 

And yet perhaps of no time or country, for the last 
two thousand years, was it so true as here in this waste- 
weltering epoch of Sterling's and ours. A world all 
rocking and plunging, like that old Roman one when 
the measure of its iniquities was full ; the abysses, and 
subterranean and supernal deluges, plainly broken loose ; 
in the wild dim-lighted chaos all stars of Heaven gone 
out. No star of Heaven visible, hardly now to any 
man ; the pestiferous fogs, and foul exhalations grown 
continual, have, except on the highest mountain-tops, 
blotted out all stars : will-o'-wisps, of various course 
and colour, take the place of stars. Over the wild-surg- 
ing chaos, in the leaden air, are only sudden glares of 
revolutionary lightning ; then mere darkness, with phi- 
lanthropistic phosphorescences, empty meteoric lights ; 
here and there an ecclesiastical luminary still hovering, 
hanging on to its old quaking fixtures, pretending still 
to be a Moon or Sun, — though visibly it is but a Chinese 
Lantern made of paper mainly, with candle-end foully 
dying in the heart of it. Surely as mad a world as you 
could wish ! 

If you want to make sudden fortunes in it, and 
achieve the temporary hallelujah of flunkeys for your- 
self, renouncing the perennial esteem of wise men ; if 
you can believe that the chief end of man is to collect 
about him a bigger heap of gold than ever before, in a 
shorter time than ever before, you will find it a most 
handy and everyway furthersome, blessed and felicitous 
world. But for any other human aim, I think you will 



52 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

find it not furthersome. If you in any way ask prac- 
tically, How a noble life is to be led in it ? you will be 
luckier than Sterling or I if you get any credible answer, 
or find any made road whatever. Alas, it is even so. 
Your heart's question, if it be of that sort, most things 
and persons will answer with a : " Nonsense ! Noble life 
" is in Drury-Lane, and wears yellow boots. You fool, 
" compose yourself to your pudding !" — Surely, in these 
times, if ever in any, the young heroic soul entering 
on life, so opulent, full of sunny hope, of noble valour 
and divine intention, is tragical as well as beautiful 
to us. 

Of the three learned Professions none offered any 
likelihood for Sterling. From the Church his notions 
of the l black dragoon,' had there been no other ob- 
stacle, were sufficient to exclude him. Law he had just 
renounced, his own Radical philosophies disheartening 
him, in face of the ponderous impediments, continual 
uphill struggles and formidable toils inherent in such 
a pursuit : with Medicine he had never been in any con- 
tiguity, that he should dream of it as a course for him. 
Clearly enough the professions were unsuitable ; they 
to him, he to them. Professions, built so largely on 
speciosity instead of performance ; clogged, in this bad 
epoch, and defaced under such suspicions of fatal im- 
posture, were hateful not lovable to the young radical 
soul, scornful of gross profit, and intent on ideals and 
human noblenesses. Again, the professions, were they 
never so perfect and veracious, will require slow steady 
pulling, to which this individual young radical, with 
his swift far-darting brilliancies, and nomadic desultory 
ways, is of all men the most averse and unfitted. No 



Chap. V. A PROFESSION. 53 

profession could, in any case, have well gained the early 
love of Sterling. And perhaps withal the most tragic 
element of his life is even this, That there now was 
none to which he could fitly, by those wiser than him- 
self, have been bound and constrained, that he might 
learn to love it. So swift, light-limbed and fiery an 
Arab courser ought, for all manner of reasons, to have 
been trained to saddle and harness. Roaming at full 
gallop over the heaths, — especially when your heath 
was London, and English and European life, in the 
nineteenth century, — he suffered much, and did com- 
paratively little. T have known few creatures whom it 
was more wasteful to send forth with the bridle thrown 
up, and to set to steeple-hunting instead of running on 
highways ! But it is the lot of many such, in this dis- 
located time, — Heaven mend it ! In a better time there 
will be other ' professions ' than those three extremely 
cramp, confused and indeed almost obsolete ones : pro- 
fessions, if possible, that are true, and do not require 
you at the threshold to constitute yourself an impostor. 
Human association, — which will mean discipline, vigor- 
ous wise subordination and co-ordination, — is so un- 
speakably important. Professions, ( regimented human 
pursuits,' how many of honourable and manful might 
be possible for men ; and which should not, in their 
results to society, need to stumble along, in such an 
unwieldy futile manner, with legs swollen into such 
enormous elephantiasis and no go at all in them! Men 
will one day think of the force they squander in every 
generation, and the fatal damage they encounter, by 
this neglect. 

The career likeliest for Sterling, in his and the 



54 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

world's circumstances, would have been what is called 
public life : some secretarial, diplomatic or other official 
training, to issue if possible in Parliament as the true 
field for him. And here, beyond question, had the gross 
material conditions been allowed, his spiritual capabi- 
lities were first-rate. In any arena where eloquence 
and argument was the point, this man was calculated 
to have borne the bell from all competitors. In lucid 
ingenious talk and logic, in all manner of brilliant 
utterance and tongue-fence, I have hardly known his 
fellow. So ready lay his store of knowledge round him, 
so perfect was his ready utterance of the same, — in 
coruscating wit, in jocund drollery, in compact articu- 
lated clearness or high poignant emphasis, as the case 
required, — he was a match for any man in argument 
before a crowd of men. One of the most supple-wristed, 
dextrous, graceful and successful fencers in that kind. 
A man, as Mr. Hare has said, ( able to argue with four 
or five at once ; ' could do the parrying all round, in a 
succession swift as light, and plant his hits wherever a 
chance offered. In Parliament, such a soul put into a 
body of the due toughness might have carried it far. 
If ours is to be called, as I hear some call it, the Talk- 
ing Era, Sterling of all men had the talent to excel 
in it. 

Probably it was with some vague view towards 
chances in this direction that Sterling's first engagement 
was entered upon ; a brief connexion as Secretary to 
some Club or Association into which certain public men, 
of the reforming sort, Mr. Crawford (the Oriental Di- 
plomatist and Writer), Mr. Kirkman Finlay (then Mem- 
ber for Glasgow), and other political notabilities had 
now formed themselves, — with what specific objects I 






Chap. V. A PROFESSION. 55 

do not know, nor with what result if any. I have heard 
vaguely, it was l to open the trade to India.' Of course 
they intended to stir up the public mind into coopera- 
tion, whatever their goal or object was: Mr. Crawford, 
an intimate in the Sterling household, recognised the 
fine literary gift of John ; and might think it a lucky 
hit that he had caught such a Secretary for three hun- 
dred pounds a year. That was the salary agreed upon ; 
and for some months actually worked for and paid; 
Sterling becoming for the time an intimate and almost 
an inmate in Mr. Crawford's circle, doubtless not with- 
out results to himself beyond the secretarial work and 
pounds sterling : so much is certain. But neither the 
Secretaryship nor the Association itself had any con- 
tinuance ; nor can I now learn accurately more of it than 
what is here stated ; — in which vague state it must van- 
ish from Sterling's history again, as it in great measure 
did from his life. From himself in after years I never 
heard mention of it ; nor were his pursuits connected 
afterwards with those of Mr. Crawford, though the 
mutual goodwill continued unbroken. 

In fact, however splendid and indubitable Sterling's 
qualifications for a parliamentary life, there was that in 
him withal which fiatly put a negative on any such pro- 
ject. He had not the slow steady-pulling diligence 
which is indispensable in that, as in all important pur- 
suits and strenuous human competitions whatsoever. 
In every sense, his momentum depended on velocity of 
stroke, rather than on weight of metal : " beautifullest 
" sheet-lightning," as I often said, " not to be condens- 
" ed into thunderbolts." Add to this, — what indeed is 
perhaps but the same phenomenon in another form, — 
his bodily frame was thin, excitable, already manifest- 



56 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

ing pulmonary symptoms ; a body which the tear and 
wear of Parliament would infallibly, in few months, have 
wrecked and ended. By this path there was clearly no 
mounting. The far-darting, restlessly coruscating soul, 
equipt beyond all others to shine in the Talking Era, 
and lead National Palavers with their spolia opima cap- 
tive, is imprisoned in a fragile hectic body which quite 
forbids the adventure. ( Es ist dafiir gesorgt,' says 
Goethe, f Provision has been made that the trees do 
not grow into the sky;' — means are always there to 
stop them short of the sky. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LITERATURE : THE ATHENAEUM. 

Of ail forms of public life, in the Talking Era, it was 
clear that only one completely suited Sterling, — the 
anarchic, nomadic, entirely aerial and unconditional 
one, called Literature. To this all his tendencies, and 
fine gifts positive and negative, were evidently pointing ; 
and here, after such brief attempting or thoughts to 
attempt at other posts, he already in this same year 
arrives. As many do, and ever more must do, in these 
our years and times. This is the chaotic haven of so 
many frustrate activities ; where all manner of good 
gifts go up in far -seen smoke or conflagration; and 
whole fleets, that might have been war-fleets to conquer 
kingdoms, are consumed (too truly, often), amid c fame' 
enough, and the admiring shouts of the vulgar, which 
is always fond to see fire going on. The true Canaan 
and Mount Zion of a Talking Era must ever be Litera- 
ture : the extraneous, miscellaneous, self-elected, inde- 
scribable Parliamentum, or Talking Apparatus, which 
talks by books and printed papers. 

A literary Newspaper called The Athenceum, the 
same which still subsists, had been founded in those 
years by Mr. Buckingham; James Silk Buckingham, 
who has since continued notable under various figures. 
Mr. Buckingham's Athenceum had not as yet got into 



58 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

a flourishing condition ; and he was willing to sell the 
copyright of it for a consideration. Perhaps Sterling 
and old Cambridge friends of his had been already writ- 
ing for it. At all events, Sterling, who had already 
privately begun writing a Novel, and was clearly look- 
ing towards Literature, perceived that his gifted Cam- 
bridge friend, Frederic Maurice, was now also at large 
in a somewhat similar situation ; and that here was an 
opening for both of them, and for other gifted friends. 
The copyright was purchased for I know not what sum, 
nor with whose money, but guess it may have been Ster- 
ling's, and no great sum ; — and so, under free auspices, 
themselves their own captains, Maurice and he spread 
sail for this new voyage of adventure into all the world. 
It was about the end of 1828 that readers of periodical 
literature, and quidnuncs in those departments, began to 
report the appearance, in a Paper called the Athenceum, 
of writings shewing a superior brilliancy, and height of 
aim ; one or perhaps two slight specimens of which came 
into my own hands, in my remote corner, about that 
time, and were duly recognised by me, while the authors 
were still far off and hidden behind deep veils. 

Some of Sterling's best Papers from the Athenceum 
have been published by Archdeacon Hare : first fruits 
by a young man of twenty-two ; crude, imperfect, yet 
singularly beautiful and attractive ; which will still tes- 
tify what high literary promise lay in him. The ruddiest 
glow of young enthusiasm, of noble incipient spiritual 
manhood reigns over them ; once more a divine Universe 
unveiling itself in gloom and splendour, in auroral fire- 
light and many-tinted shadow, full of hope and full of 
awe, to a young melodious pious heart just arrived upon 
it. Often enough the delineation has a certain flowing 



Chap. VI. LITERATURE : THE ATHEN^UM. 59 

completeness, not to be expected from so young an 
artist ; here and there is a decided felicity of insight ; 
everywhere the point of view adopted is a high and noble 
one, and the result worked out a result to be sympa- 
thised with, and accepted so far as it will go. Good 
reading still, those Papers, for the less furnished mind, — 
thrice-excellent reading compared with what is usually 
going. For the rest, a grand melancholy is the prevailing 
impression they leave; — partly as if, while the surface 
was so blooming and opulent, the heart of them was 
still vacant, sad and cold. Here is a beautiful mirage, 
in the dry wilderness ; but you cannot quench your 
thirst there ! The writer's heart is indeed still too 
vacant, except of beautiful shadows and reflexes and 
resonances; and is far from joyful, though it wears 
commonly a smile. 

In some of the Greek delineations {The Lycian 
Painter, for example,) we have already noticed a strange 
opulence of splendour, characterisable as half-legitimate, 
half-meretricious, — a splendour hovering between the 
raffaelesque and the japannish. What other things 
Sterling wrote there, I never knew ; nor would he in 
any mood, in those later days, have told you, had you 
asked. This period of his life he always rather ac- 
counted, as the Arabs do the idolatrous times before 
Mahomet's advent, the 'period of darkness.' 



CHAPTER VII. 



REGENT STREET. 



On the commercial side, the Atlienceum still lacked suc- 
cess ; nor was like to find it under the highly uncom- 
mercial management it had now got into. This, by and 
by, began to be a serious consideration. For money is 
the sinews of Periodical Literature almost as much as of 
war itself; without money, and under a constant drain 
of loss, Periodical Literature is one of the things that 
cannot be carried on. In no long time Sterling began 
to be practically sensible of this truth ; and that an un- 
pleasant resolution in accordance with it would be neces- 
sary. By him also, after a while, the Atlienceum was 
transferred to other hands, better fitted in that respect ; 
and under these it did take vigorous root, and still bears 
fruit according to its kind. 

For the present, it brought him into the thick of 
London Literature, especially of young London Litera- 
ture and speculation ; in which turbid exciting element 
he swam and revelled, nothing loath, for certain months 
longer, — a period short of two years in all. He had 
lodgings in Regent Street: his Father's house, now a 
nourishing and stirring establishment, in South Place, 
Knightsbridge, where, under the warmth of increasing re- 
venue and success, miscellaneous cheerful socialities and 
abundant speculations, chiefly political (and not John's 



Chap. VII. REGENT STREET. 61 

kind, but that of the Times Newspaper and the Clubs), 
were rife, he could visit daily, and yet be master of his 
own studies and pursuits. Maurice, Trench, John Mill, 
Charles Buller: these, and some few others, among a 
wide circle of a transitory phantasmal character, whom 
he speedily forgot and cared not to remember, were 
much about him ; with these he in all ways employed 
and disported himself: a first favourite with them all. 

No pleasanter companion, I suppose, had any of 
them. So frank, open, guileless, fearless, a brother to 
all worthy souls whatsoever. Come when you might, 
here is he open-hearted, rich in cheerful fancies, in grave 
logic, in all kinds of bright activity. If perceptibly or 
imperceptibly there is a touch of ostentation in him, 
blame it not ; it is so innocent, so good and childlike. 
He is still fonder of jingling publicly, and spreading 
on the table, your big purse of opulences than his own. 
Abrupt too he is, cares little for big wigs and garnitures ; 
perhaps laughs more than the real fun he has would 
order ; but of arrogance there is no vestige, of insincerity 
or of ill-nature none. These must have been pleasant 
evenings in Regent Street, when the circle chanced 
to be well adjusted there. At other times, Philistines 
would enter, what we call bores, dullards, Children of 
Darkness; and then, — except in a hunt of dullards, 
and a bore-baiting, which might be permissible, — the 
evening was dark. Sterling, of course, had innumerable 
cares withal ; and was toiling like a slave ; his very re- 
creations almost a kind of work. An enormous activity 
was in the man ; — sufficient, in a body that could have 
held it without breaking, to have gone far, even under 
the unstable guidance it was like to have ! 

Thus, too, an extensive, very variegated circle of con- 



62 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

nexions was forming round him. Besides his Athenceum 
work, and evenings in Regent Street and elsewhere, he 
makes visits to country-houses, the Bullers' and others ; 
converses with established gentlemen, with honourable 
women not a few ; is gay and welcome with the young 
of his own age ; knows also religious, witty and other 
distinguished ladies, and is admiringly known by them. 
On the whole he is already locomotive ; visits hither and 
thither in a very rapid flying manner. Thus I find he 
had made one flying visit to the Cumberland Lake-region 
in 1828, and got sight of Wordsworth ; and in the same 
year another flying one to Paris, and seen with no 
undue enthusiasm the Saint- Simonian Portent just be- 
ginning to preach for itself, and France in general sim- 
mering under a scum of impieties, levities, Saint-Simon- 
isms, and frothy fantasticalities of all kinds, towards the 
boiling-over which soon made the Three Days of July 
famous. But by far the most important foreign home 
he visited was that of Coleridge on the Hill of Highgate, 
— if it were not rather a foreign shrine and Dodona- 
Oracle, as he then reckoned, — to which (onwards from 
1828, as would appear) he was already an assiduous pil- 
grim. Concerning whom, and Sterling's all-important 
connexion with him, there will be much to say anon. 

Here, from this period, is a Letter of Sterling's, which 
the glimpses it affords of bright scenes and figures now 
sunk, so many of them, sorrowfully to the realm of sha- 
dows, will render interesting to some of my readers. 
To me on the mere Letter, not on its contents alone, 
there is accidentally a kind of fateful stamp. A few 
months after Charles Buller's death, while his loss was 
mourned by many hearts, and to his poor Mother all 
light except what hung upon his memory had gone out 



Chap. VII. REGENT STREET. bo 

in the world, a certain delicate and friendly hand, hop- 
ing to give the poor bereaved lady a good moment, 
sought out this Letter of Sterling's, one morning, and 
called, with intent to read it to her: — alas, the poor 
lady had herself fallen suddenly into the languors of 
death, help of another grander sort now close at hand ; 
and to her this Letter was never read ! — 

On * Fanny Kemble,' it appears, there is an Essay 
by Sterling in the Athenceum of this year : ( 16th De- 
cember, 1829.' Very laudatory, I conclude. He much 
admired her genius, nay was thought at one time to be 
vaguely on the edge of still more chivalrous feelings. 
As the Letter itself may perhaps indicate. 

' To Anthony Sterling ', Esq., 24>th Regiment, Dublin. 

< Knightsbridge, Nov. 10, 1829. 

e My dear Anthony, — Here in the Capital of Eng- 
' land and of Europe, there is less, so far as I hear, of 
e movement and variety than in your provincial Dublin, 
' or among the Wicklow Mountains. We have the old 
( prospect of bricks and smoke, the old crowd of busy 
i stupid faces, the old occupations, the old sleepy amuse- 
c ments ; and the latest news that reaches us daily has an 
' air of tiresome, doting antiquity. The world has no- 
' thing for it but to exclaim with Faust, " Give me my 

* youth again." And as for me, my month of Cornish 
f amusement is over ; and I must tie myself to my old 
' employments. I have not much to tell you about 

* these ; but perhaps you may like to hear of my expe- 
( dition to the West. 

f I wrote to Polvellan (Mr. Buller's) to announce the 
' day on which I intended to be there, so shortly before 



64 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

' setting out, that there was no time to receive an an- 
' swer ; and when I reached Devonport, which is fifteen 
' or sixteen miles from my place of destination, I found 
' a letter from Mrs. Buller, saying that she was coming 
' in two days to a Ball at Plymouth, and if I chose to 
' stay in the meanwhile and look about me, she would 
( take me back with her. She added an introduction to 
c a relation of her husband's, a certain Captain Buller 

* of the Rifles, who was with the Depot there, — a plea- 
' sant person, who I believe had been acquainted with 

* Charlotte,* or at least had seen her. Under his super- 
' intendence' — * * * 

* On leaving Devonport with Mrs. Buller, I went 
6 some of the way by water, up the harbour and river; 
' and the prospects are certainly very beautiful ; to say 
' nothing of the large ships, which I admire almost as 
' much as you, though without knowing so much about 
' them. There is a great deal of fine scenery all along 
' the road to Looe ; and the House itself, a very un- 

* pretending Gothic cottage, stands beautifully among 

* trees, hills and water, with the sea at the distance of 
' a quarter of a mile. 

' And here, among pleasant, good-natured, well-in- 
' formed, and clever people, I spent an idle month. I 
' dined at one or two Corporation dinners ; spent a few 
' days at the old Mansion of Mr. Buller of Morval, the 
' patron of West Looe ; and during the rest of the time, 
1 read, wrote, played chess, lounged, and ate red mullet 
( (he who has not done this has not begun to live) ; 

* talked of cookery to the philosophers, and of meta- 
' physics to Mrs. Buller ; and altogether cultivated indo- 
' lence, and developed the faculty of nonsense with con- 

* Mrs. Anthony Sterling, very lately Miss Charlotte Baird. 



Chap. VII. REGENT STREET. 65 

' siderable pleasure and unexampled success. Charles 
( Buller you know: he has just come to town, but I 
' have not yet seen him. Arthur, his younger brother, I 
' take to be one of the handsomest men in England ; and 
1 he too has considerable talent. Mr. Buller the father 
( is rather a clever man of sense, and particularly good- 
' natured and gentlemanly ; and his wife, who was a 
' renowned beauty and queen of Calcutta, has still many 
1 striking and delicate traces of what she was. Her 
( conversation is more brilliant and pleasant than that 
i of any one I know ; and, at all events, I am bound to 
1 admire her for the kindness with which she patronises 
e me. I hope that, some day or other, you may be ac- 
' quainted with her. 

f I believe I have seen no one in London about 
( whom you would care to hear, — unless the fame of 
1 Fanny Kemble has passed the Channel, and astonish- 
' ed the Irish Barbarians in the midst of their bloody- 
( minded politics. Young Kemble, whom you have 
f seen, is in Germany : but I have the happiness of being 
' also acquainted with his sister, the divine Fanny ; and 
' I have seen her twice on the stage, and three or four 
' times in private, since my return from Cornwall. T 
' had seen some beautiful verses of hers, long before she 
1 was an actress ; and her conversation is full of spirit 
' and talent. She never was taught to act at all ; and 
( though there are many faults in her performance of 
( Juliet, there is more power than in any female playing 
* I ever saw, except Pasta's Medea. She is not hand- 
' some, rather short, and by no means delicately formed ; 
c but her face is marked, and the eyes are brilliant, dark, 
' and full of character. She has far more ability than 
' she ever can display on the stage ; but I have no doubt 

F 



66 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

' that, by practice and self-culture, she will be a far 

* finer actress at least than any one since Mrs. Siddons. 
f I was at Charles Kemble's a few evenings ago, when 
1 a drawing of Miss Kemble, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
' was brought in ; and I have no doubt that you will 
' shortly see, even in Dublin, an engraving of her from 
6 it, very unlike the caricatures that have hitherto ap- 
' peared. I hate the stage ; and but for her, should very 
( likely never have gone to a theatre again. Even as it 
' is, the annoyance is much more than the pleasure ; but 
' I suppose I must go to see her in every character in 

* which she acts. If Charlotte cares for plays, let me 
' know, and I will write in more detail about this new 
( Melpomene. T fear there are very few subjects on 

* which I can say anything that will in the least interest 
6 her. — Ever affectionately yours, 

' J. Sterling.' 

Sterling and his circle, as their ardent speculation 
and activity fermented along, were in all things clear 
for progress, liberalism ; their politics, and view of the 
Universe, decisively of the Radical sort. As indeed 
that of England then was, more than ever ; the crust 
of old hidebound Toryism being now openly cracking 
towards some incurable disruption, which accordingly 
ensued as the Reform Bill before long. The Reform 
Bill already hung in the wind. Old hidebound Toryism, 
long recognised by all the world, and now at last obliged 
to recognise its very self, for an overgrown Imposture, 
supporting itself not by human reason, but by flunkey 
blustering and brazen lying, superadded to mere brute 
force, could be no creed for young Sterling and his 
friends. In all things he and they were liberals, and, 



Chap. VII. REGENT STREET. 67 

as was natural at this stage, democrats ; contemplating 
root-and-branch innovation by aid of the hustings and 
ballotbox. Hustings and ballotbox had speedily to van- 
ish out of Sterling's thoughts ; but the character of root- 
and-branch innovator, essentially of ' Radical Reformer,' 
was indelible with him, and under all forms could be 
traced as his character through life. 

For the present, his and those young people's aim 
was : By democracy, or what means there are, be all 
impostures put down. Speedy end to Superstition, — a 
gentle one if you can contrive it, but an end. What 
can it profit any mortal to adopt locutions and imagi- 
nations which do not correspond to fact ; which no sane 
mortal can deliberately adopt in his soul as true ; which 
the most orthodox of mortals can only, and this after 
infinite essentially impious effort to put out the eyes of 
his mind, persuade himself to ' believe that he believes V 
Away with it ; in the name of God, come out of it, all 
true men ! 

Piety of heart, a certain reality of religious faith, was 
always Sterling's, the gift of nature to him which he 
would not and could not throw away ; but I find at this 
time his religion is as good as altogether Ethnic, Greek- 
ish, what Goethe calls the Heathen form of religion. 
The Church, with her articles, is without relation to him. 
And along with obsolete spiritualisms, he sees all-manner 
of obsolete thrones and big-wigged temporalities ; and for 
them also can prophesy, and wish, only a speedy doom. 
Doom inevitable, registered in Heaven's Chancery from 
the beginning of days, doom unalterable as the pillars of 
the world ; the gods are angry, and all Nature groans, 
till this doom of eternal justice be fulfilled. 

With gay audacity, with enthusiasm tempered by 



68 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

mockery, as is the manner of young gifted men, this 
faith, grounded for the present on democracy and hustings 
operations, and giving to all life the aspect of a chival- 
rous battlefield, or almost of a gay though perilous tour- 
nament, and bout of " A hundred knights against all 
comers," — was maintained by Sterling and his friends. 
And in fine, after whatever loud remonstrances, and 
solemn considerations, and such shaking of our wigs as 
is undoubtedly natural in the case, let us be just to it 
and him. We shall have to admit, nay it will behove 
us to see and practically know, for ourselves and him 
and others, that the essence of this creed, in times 
like ours, was right and not wrong. That, however the 
ground and form of it might change, essentially it was 
the monition of his natal genius to this as it is to every 
brave man ; the behest of all his clear insight into this 
Universe, the message of Heaven through him, which 
he could not suppress, but was inspired and compelled 
to utter in this world by such methods as he had. There 
for him lay the first commandment; this is what it 
would have been the unforgivable sin to swerve from 
and desert: the treason of treasons for him, it were 
there ; compared with which all other sins are venial ! 

The message did not cease at all, as we shall see ; 
the message was ardently, if fitfully, continued to the 
end : but the methods, the tone and dialect and all 
outer conditions of uttering it, underwent most impor- 
tant modifications ! 



CHAPTER VIII. 



COLERIDGE. 



Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those 
years, looking down on London and its smoke-tnmult, 
like a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle ; at- 
tracting towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave 
souls still engaged there. His express contributions to 
poetry, philosophy, or any specific province of human 
literature or enlightenment, had been small and sadly 
intermittent ; but he had, especially among young in- 
quiring men, a higher than literary, a kind of pro- 
phetic or magician character. He was thought to hold, 
he alone in England, the key of German and other 
Transcendentalisms ; knew the sublime secret of be- 
lieving by ' the reason' what ' the understanding' had 
been obliged to fling out as incredible; and could still, 
after Hume and Voltaire had done their best and worst 
with him, profess himself an orthodox Christian, and 
say and print to the Church of England, with its sin- 
gular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallowtide, Esto 
perpetua. A sublime man ; who, alone in those dark 
days, had saved his crown of spiritual manhood ; escap- 
ing from the black materialisms, and revolutionary de- 
luges, with e God, Freedom, Immortality' still his : a 
king of men. The practical intellects of the world did 
not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a meta- 



70 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

physical dreamer : but to the rising spirits of the young 
generation he had this dusky sublime character; and 
sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and 
enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gilman's house 
at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whe- 
ther oracles or jargon. 

The Gilmans did not encourage much company, or 
excitation of any sort, round their sage ; nevertheless 
access to him, if a youth did reverently wish it, was not 
difficult. He would stroll about the pleasant garden 
with you, sit in the pleasant rooms of the place, — per- 
haps take you to his own peculiar room, high up, with 
a rearward view, which was the chief view of all. A 
really charming outlook, in fine weather. Close at hand, 
wide sweep of flowery leafy gardens, their few houses 
mostly hidden, the very chimney-pots veiled under blos- 
somy umbrage, flowed gloriously down hill ; gloriously 
issuing in wide-tufted undulating plain- country, rich in 
all charms of field and town. Waving blooming country 
of the brightest green ; dotted all over with handsome 
villas, handsome groves ; crossed by roads and human 
traffic, here inaudible or heard only as a musical hum : and 
behind all swam, under olive-tinted haze, the illimitable 
limitary ocean of London, with its domes and steeples 
definite in the sun, big Paul's and the many memories 
attached to it hanging high over all. Nowhere, of its 
kind, could you see a grander prospect on a bright 
summer day, with the set of the air going southward, 
— southward, and so draping with the city-smoke not 
you but the city. Here for hours would Coleridge talk, 
concerning all conceivable or inconceivable things ; and 
liked nothing better than to have an intelligent, or fail- 
ing that, even a silent and patient human listener. He 



Chap. VIII. COLERIDGE. 71 

distinguished himself to all that ever heard him as at 
least the most surprising talker extant in this world, — 
and to some small minority, by no means to all, as the 
most excellent. 

The good man, he was now getting old, towards 
sixty perhaps ; and gave you the idea of a life that had 
been full of sufferings ; a life heavy-laden, half-van- 
quished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold 
physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were 
round, and of massive weight, but the face was flabby 
and irresolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were 
as full of sorrow as of inspiration ; confused pain looked 
mildly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. 
The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, 
might be called flabby and irresolute ; expressive of 
weakness under possibility of strength. He hung loosely 
on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude ; in 
walking, he rather shuffled than decisively stept ; and a 
lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of 
the garden-walk would suit him best, but continually 
shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. 
A heavy-laden, high-aspiring and surely much-suffer- 
ing man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had con- 
tracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong ; he 
spoke as if preaching, — you would have said, preaching 
earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things. I 
still recollect his ' object' and * subject,' terms of con- 
tinual recurrence in the Kantean province ; and how 
he sung and snuffled them into " om-m-mject" and 
" sum-m-mject," with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, 
as he rolled along. No talk, in his century or in any 
other, could be more surprising. 

Sterling, who assiduously attended him, with pro- 



72 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

found reverence, and was often with him by himself, 
for a good many months, gives a record of their first 
colloquy.* Their colloquies were numerous, and he had 
taken note of many ; but they are all gone to the fire, 
except this first, which Mr. Hare has printed, — un- 
luckily without date. It contains a number of inge- 
nious, true and half-true observations, and is of course 
a faithful epitome of the things said; but it gives small 
idea of Coleridge's way of talking ; — this one feature is 
perhaps the most recognisable, ' Our interview lasted for 
( three hours, during which he talked two hours and three 
' quarters.' Nothing could be more copious than his 
talk ; and furthermore it was always, virtually or liter- 
ally, of the nature of a monologue ; suffering no interrup- 
tion, however reverent ; hastily putting aside all foreign 
additions, annotations, or most ingenuous desires for elu- 
cidation, as well-meant superfluities which would never 
do. Besides, it was talk not flowing anywhither like a 
river, but spreading everywhither in inextricable cur- 
rents and regurgitations like a lake or sea ; terribly 
deficient in definite goal or aim, nay often in logical 
intelligibility ; what you were to believe or do, on any 
earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear 
from it. So that, most times, you felt logically lost ; 
swamped near to drowning in this tide of ingenious 
vocables, spreading out boundless as if to submerge the 
world. 

To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into, whe- 
ther you consent or not, can in the long-run be exhila- 
rating to no creature ; how eloquent soever the flood of 
utterance that is descending. But if it be withal a con- 
fused unintelligible flood of utterance, threatening to 
* Biography by Hare, pp. xvi.-xxvi. 



Chap. VIII. COLERIDGE. 73 

submerge all known landmarks of thought, and drown 
the world and you ! — I have heard Coleridge talk, with 
eager musical energy, two stricken hours, his face 
radiant and moist, and communicate no meaning what- 
soever to any individual of his hearers, — certain of 
whom, I for one, still kept eagerly listening in hope ; 
the most had long before given up, and formed (if the 
room were large enough) secondary humming groups of 
their Own. He began anywhere : you put some ques- 
tion to him, made some suggestive observation ; instead 
of answering this, or decidedly setting out towards an- 
swer of it, he would accumulate formidable apparatus, 
logical swim-bladders, transcendental life-preservers and 
other precautionary and vehiculatory gear, for setting 
out; perhaps did at last get under way, — but was 
swiftly solicited, turned aside by the glance of some ra- 
diant new game on this hand or that, into new courses ; 
and ever into new ; and before long into all the Uni- 
verse, where it was uncertain what game you would 
catch, or whether any. 

His talk, alas, was distinguished, like himself, by 
irresolution : it disliked to be troubled with condi- 
tions, abstinences, definite fulfilments; — loved to wan- 
der at its own sweet will, and make its auditor and his 
claims and humble wishes a mere passive bucket for 
itself! He had knowledge about many things and 
topics, much curious reading ; but generally all topics 
led him, after a pass or two, into the high seas of 
theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean 
transcendentalism, with its ( sum - m - mjects ' and 
' om-m-mjects.' Sad enough; for with such indolent 
impatience of the claims and ignorances of others, he 
had not the least talent for explaining this or anything 



74 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

unknown to them ; and you swam and fluttered in the 
mistiest wide unintelligible deluge of things, for most 
part in a rather profitless uncomfortable manner. 

Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out of the haze ; 
but they were few, and soon swallowed in the general 
element again. Balmy sunny islets, islets of the blest 
and the intelligible ; — on which occasions those second- 
ary humming groups would all cease humming, and 
hang breathless upon the eloquent words ; till once your 
islet got wrapt in the mist again, and they could recom- 
mence humming. Eloquent artistically expressive words 
you always had ; piercing radiances of a most subtle in- 
sight came at intervals ; tones of noble pious sympathy, 
recognisable as pious though strangely coloured, were 
never wanting long : but in general you could not call 
this aimless, cloudcapt, cloudbased, lawlessly meander- 
ing human discourse of reason by the name of ' excel- 
lent talk,' but only of e surprising ;' and were reminded 
bitterly of Hazlitt's account of it : "Excellent talker, 
" very, — if you let him start from no premises and come 
" to no conclusion." Coleridge was not without what 
talkers call wit, and there were touches of prickly sar- 
casm in him, contemptuous enough of the world and its 
idols and popular dignitaries ; he had traits even of poetic 
humour : but in general he seemed deficient in laughter; 
or indeed in sympathy for concrete human things either 
on the sunny or on the stormy side. One right peal 
of concrete laughter at some convicted flesh-and-blood 
absurdity, one burst of noble indignation at some injus- 
tice or depravity, rubbing elbows with us on this solid 
Earth, how strange would it have been in that Kantean 
haze-world, and how infinitely cheering amid its vacant 
air-castles and dim-melting ghosts and shadows ! None 



Chap. VIII. COLERIDGE. 75 

such ever came. His life had been an abstract thinking 
and dreaming, idealistic, passed amid the ghosts of de- 
funct bodies and of unborn ones. The moaning sing- 
song of that theosophico-nietaphysical monotony left on 
you, at last, a very dreary feeling. 

In close colloquy, flowing within narrower banks, I 
suppose he was more definite and apprehensible ; Ster- 
ling in after times did not complain of his unintelligi- 
bility, or imputed it only to the abstruse high nature of 
the topics handled. Let us hope so, let us try to be- 
lieve so ! There is no doubt but Coleridge could speak 
plain words on things plain : his observations and re- 
sponses on the trivial matters that occurred were as 
simple as the commonest man's, or were even distin- 
guished by superior simplicity as well as pertinency. 
" Ah, your tea is too cold, Mr. Coleridge !" mourned 
the good Mrs. Gilman once, in her kind, reverential and 
yet protective manner, handing him a very tolerable 
though belated cup. — "It's better than I deserve!" 
snuffled he, in a low hoarse murmur, partly courteous, 
chiefly pious, the tone of which still abides with me : 
" It's better than I deserve ! " 

But indeed, to the young ardent mind, instinct with 
pious nobleness, yet driven to the grim deserts of Ra- 
dicalism for a faith, his speculations had a charm much 
more than literary, a charm almost religious and pro- 
phetic. The constant gist of his discourse was lamen- 
tation over the sunk condition of the world; which he 
recognised to be given up to Atheism and Materialism, 
full of mere sordid misbeliefs, mispursuits and misre- 
sults. All Science had become mechanical ; the science 
not of men, but of a kind of human beavers. Churches 
themselves had died away into a godless mechanical 



76 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

condition ; and stood there as mere Cases of Articles, 
mere Forms of Churches ; like the dried carcasses of 
once swift camels, which you find left withering in the 
thirst of the universal desert, — ghastly portents for the 
present, beneficent ships of the desert no more. Men's 
souls were blinded, hebetated ; sunk under the influence 
of Atheism and Materialism, and Hume and Voltaire : 
the world for the present was as an extinct world, de- 
serted of God, and incapable of welldoing till it changed 
its heart and spirit. This, expressed I think with less of 
indignation and with more of long-drawn querulousness, 
was always recognisable as the ground-tone : — in which 
truly a pious young heart, driven into Radicalism and 
the opposition party, could not but recognise a too 
sorrowful truth ; and ask of the Oracle, with all earnest- 
ness, What remedy, then ? 

The remedy, though Coleridge himself professed to 
see it as in sunbeams, could not, except by processes 
unspeakably difficult, be described to you at all. On 
the whole, those dead Churches, this dead English 
Church especially, must be brought to life again. Why 
not ? It was not dead ; the soul of it, in this parch ed- 
up body, was tragically asleep only. Atheistic Philoso- 
phy was true on its side, and Hume and Voltaire could 
on their own ground speak irrefragably for themselves 
against any Church : but lift the Church and them into 
a higher sphere of argument, they died into inanition, 
the Church revivified itself into pristine florid vigour, 
— became once more a living ship of the desert, and 
invincibly bore you over stock and stone. But how, 
but how ! By attending to the ' reason' of man, said 
Coleridge, and duly chaining up the ( understanding' 
of man : the Vernunft (Reason) and Verstand (Under- 



Chap. VIIL COLERIDGE. 77 

standing) of the Germans, it all turned upon these, if 
you could well understand them, — which you couldn't. 
For the rest, Mr. Coleridge had on the anvil various 
Books, especially was about to write one grand Book 
On the Logos, which would help to bridge the chasm 
for us. So much appeared, however : Churches, though 
proved false (as you had imagined), were still true (as 
you were to imagine) : here was an Artist who could 
burn you up an old Church, root and branch ; and then 
as the Alchymists professed to do with organic sub- 
stances in general, distil you an ' Astral Spirit' from 
the ashes, which was the very image of the old burnt 
article, its airdrawn counterpart, — this you still had, 
or might get, and draw uses from, if you could. Wait 
till the Book on the Logos were done ; — alas, till your 
own terrene eyes, blind with conceit and the dust of 
logic, were purged, subtilised and spiritualised into the 
sharpness of vision requisite for discerning such an 
" om-m-mject." — The ingenuous young English head, 
of those days, stood strangely puzzled by such revela- 
tions ; uncertain whether it were getting inspired, or 
getting infatuated into flat imbecility; and strange ef- 
fulgence, of new day or else of deeper meteoric night, 
coloured the horizon of the future for it. 

Let me not be unjust to this memorable man. 
Surely there was here, in his pious, ever-labouring, 
subtle mind, a precious truth, or prefigurement of 
truth ; and yet a fatal delusion withal. Prefigure- 
ment that, in spite of beaver sciences and temporary 
spiritual hebetude and cecity, man and his Universe 
were eternally divine ; and that no past nobleness, or 
revelation of the divine, could or would ever be lost 
to him. Most true, surely, and worthy of all accept- 



78 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

ance. Good also to do what you can with old Churches 
and practical Symbols of the Noble ; nay quit not the 
burnt ruins of them while you find there is still gold 
to be dug there. But, on the whole, do not think you 
can, by logical alchymy, distil astral spirits from them ; 
or if you could, that said astral spirits, or defunct lo- 
gical phantasms, could serve you in anything. What 
the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration 
of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, — that, in God's 
name, leave un credited ; at your peril do not try be- 
lieving that. No subtlest hocus-pocus of * reason' ver- 
sus ' understanding ' will avail for that feat ; — and it is 
terribly perilous to try it in these provinces ! 

The truth is, I now see, Coleridge's talk and spe- 
culation was the emblem of himself : in it as in him, a 
ray of heavenly inspiration struggled, in a tragically in- 
effectual degree, with the weakness of flesh and blood. 
He says once, he f had skirted the howling deserts of 
Infidelity ;' this was evident enough : but he had not 
had the courage, in defiance of pain and terror, to press 
resolutely across said deserts to the new firm lands of 
Faith beyond ; he preferred to create logical fatamor- 
ganas for himself on this hither side, and laboriously 
solace himself with these. 

To the man himself Nature had given, in high mea- 
sure, the seeds of a noble endowment ; and to unfold 
it had been forbidden him. A subtle lynx-eyed intel- 
lect, tremulous pious sensibility to all good and all 
beautiful; truly a ray of empyrean light; — but im- 
bedded in such weak laxity of character, in such indo- 
lences and esuriences as had made strange work with 
it. Once more, the tragic story of a high endowment 
with an insufficient will. An eye to discern the di- 



Chap. VIII. COLERIDGE. 79 

vineness of the Heaven's splendours and lightnings, the 
insatiable wish to revel in their godlike radiances and 
brilliancies ; but no heart to front the scathing terrors 
of them, which is the first condition of your conquering 
an abiding-place there. The courage necessary for him, 
above all things, had been denied this man. His life, 
with such ray of the empyrean in it, was great and ter- 
rible to him ; and he had not valiantly grappled with it, 
he had fled from it ; sought refuge in vague daydreams, 
hollow compromises, in opium, in theosophic metaphy- 
sics. Harsh pain, danger, necessity, slavish harnessed 
toil, were of all things abhorrent to him. And so the 
empyrean element, lying smothered under the terrene, 
and yet inextinguishable there, made sad writhings. 
For pain, danger, difficulty, steady slaving toil, and 
other highly disagreeable behests of destiny, shall in 
no wise be shirked by any brightest mortal that will 
approve himself loyal to his mission in this world ; nay 
precisely the higher he is, the deeper will be the dis- 
agreeableness, and the detestability to flesh and blood, 
of the tasks laid on him ; and the heavier, too, and more 
tragic, his penalties if he neglect them. 

For the old Eternal Powers do live forever ; nor do 
their laws know any change, however we in our poor 
wigs and church-tippets may attempt to read their laws. 
To steal into Heaven, — by the modern method, of 
sticking ostrich-like your head into fallacies on Earth, 
equally as by the ancient and by all conceivable me- 
thods, — is forever forbidden. High-treason is the name 
of that attempt; and it continues to be punished as 
such. Strange enough : here once more was a kind of 
Heaven-scaling Ixion ; and to him, as to the old one, 
the just gods were very stern ! The ever - revolving, 



80 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

never - advancing Wheel (of a kind) was his, through 
life ; and from his Cloud Juno did not he too procreate 
strange Centaurs, spectral Puseyisms, monstrous illu- 
sory Hybrids, and ecclesiastical Chimeras, — which now 
roam the Earth in a very lamentable manner ! 




CHAPTER IX. 



SPANISH EXILES. 



This magical ingredient thrown into the wild cauldron 
of such a mind, which we have seen occupied hitherto 
with mere Ethnicism, Radicalism and revolutionary tu- 
mult, but hungering all along for something higher and 
better, was sure to be eagerly welcomed and imbibed, 
and could not fail to produce important fermentations 
there. Fermentations ; important new directions, and 
withal important new perversions, in the spiritual life 
of this man, as it has since done in the lives of so many. 
Here then is the new celestial manna we were all in 
quest of ? This thrice-refined pabulum of transcen- 
dental moonshine ? Whoso eateth thereof, — yes, what, 
on the whole, will lie probably grow to ? 

Sterling never spoke much to me of his intercourse 
with Coleridge ; and when we did compare notes about 
him, it was usually rather in the way of controversial 
discussion than of narrative. So that, from my own re- 
sources, I can give no details of the business, nor spe- 
cify anything in it, except the general fact of an ardent 
attendance at Highgate continued for many months, 
which was impressively known to all Sterling's friends ; 
and am unable to assign even the limitary dates, Ster- 
ling's own papers on the subject having all been de- 
stroyed by him. Inferences point to the end of 1828 



82 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

as the beginning of this intercourse ; perhaps in 1829 
it was at the highest point ; and already in 1830, when 
the intercourse itself was about to terminate, we have 
proof of the influences it was producing, — in the Novel 
of Arthur Coningsby, then on hand, the first and only- 
Book that Sterling ever wrote. His writings hitherto 
had been sketches, criticisms, brief essays ; he was now 
trying it on a wider scale ; but not yet with satisfactory 
results, and it proved to be his only trial in that form. 

He had already, as was intimated, given up his brief 
proprietorship of the Athenceum ; the commercial indi- 
cations, and state of sales and of costs, peremptorily 
ordering him to do so : the copyright went by sale or 
gift, I know not at what precise date, into other fitter 
hands ; and with the copyright all connexion on the 
part of Sterling. To Athenceum Sketches had now (in 
1829-30) succeeded Arthur Coningsby, a Novel in three 
volumes ; indicating (when it came to light, a year or 
two afterwards) equally hasty and much more ambitious 
aims in Literature; — giving strong evidence, too, of in- 
ternal spiritual revulsions going painfully forward, and 
in particular of the impression Coleridge was producing 
on him. Without and within, it was a wild tide of 
things this ardent light young soul was afloat upon, at 
present ; and his outlooks into the future, whether for 
his spiritual or economic fortunes, were confused enough. 

Among his familiars in this period, I might have 
mentioned one Charles Barton, formerly his fellow- 
student at Cambridge, now an amiable, cheerful, rather 
idle young fellow about Town ; who led the way into 
certain new experiences, and lighter fields, for Sterling. 
His Father, Lieut.-General Barton of the Lifeguards, 



Chap. IX. SPANISH EXILES. 83 

an Irish landlord, I think in Fermanagh County, and 
a man of connexions about Court, lived in a certain 
figure here in Town ; had a wife of fashionable habits, 
with other sons, and also daughters, bred in this sphere. 
These, all of them, were amiable, elegant and pleasant 
people; — such was especially an eldest daughter, Su- 
sannah Barton, a stately • blooming black -eyed young 
woman, attractive enough in form and character ; full of 
gay softness, of indolent sense and enthusiasm ; about 
Sterling's own age, if not a little older. In this house, 
which opened to him, more decisively than his Father's, 
a new stratum of "society, and where his reception for 
Charles's sake and his own was of the kindest, he liked 
very well to be ; and spent, I suppose, many of his va- 
cant half-hours, lightly chatting with the elders or the 
youngsters,' — doubtless with the young lady too, though 
as yet without particular intentions on either side. 

Nor, with all the Coleridge fermentation, was demo- 
cratic Radicalism by any means given up; — though 
how it was to live if the Coleridgean moonshine took 
effect, might have been an abstruse question. Hitherto, 
while said moonshine was but taking effect, and colour- 
ing the outer surface of things without quite penetrat- 
ing into the heart, democratic Liberalism, revolt against 
superstition and oppression, and help to whosoever would 
revolt, was still the grand element in Sterling's creed ; 
and practically he stood, not ready only, but full of 
alacrity to fulfil all its behests. We heard long since of 
the ' black dragoons,' — whom doubtless the new moon- 
shine had considerably silvered over into new hues, by 
this time : — but here now, while Radicalism is totter- 
ing for him and threatening to crumble, comes suddenly 
the grand consummation and explosion of Radicalism in 



84 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

his life ; whereby, all at once, Radicalism exhausted 
and ended itself', and appeared no more there. 

In those years a visible section of the London popu- 
lation, and conspicuous out of all proportion to its size 
or value, was a small knot of Spaniards, who had sought 
shelter here as Political Refugees. " Political Refu- 
gees :" a tragic succession of that class is one of the 
possessions of England in our time. Six-and-twenty 
years ago, when 1 first saw London, I remember those 
unfortunate Spaniards among the new phenomena. 
Daily in the cold spring air, under skies so unlike their 
own, you could see a group of fifty or a hundred stately 
tragic figures, in proud threadbare cloaks ; perambu- 
lating, mostly with closed lips, the broad pavements of 
Euston Square and the regions about St. Pancras new 
Church. Their lodging was chiefly in Somers Town, 
as I understood ; and those open pavements about St. 
Pancras Church were the general place of rendezvous. 
They spoke little or no English ; knew nobody, could 
employ themselves on nothing, in this new scene. Old 
steel-grey heads, many of them ; the shaggy, thick, blue- 
black hair of others struck you ; their brown complex- 
ion, dusky look of suppressed fire, in general their tragic 
condition as of caged Numidian lions. 

That particular Flight of Unfortunates has long 
since fled again, and vanished ; and new have come 
and fled. In this convulsed revolutionary epoch, which 
already lasts above sixty years, what tragic flights of 
such have we not seen arrive on the one safe coast which 
is open to them, as they get successively vanquished, 
and chased into exile to avoid worse ! Swarm after 
swarm, of ever new complexion, from Spain as from 



Chap. IX. SPANISH EXILES. 85 

other countries, is thrown off, in those ever-recurring 
paroxysms ; and will continue to be thrown off. As 
there could be (suggests Linnaeus) a ' flower-clock,' 
measuring the hours of the day, and the months of the 
year, by the kinds of flowers that go to sleep and 
awaken, that blow into beauty and fade into dust : so 
in the great Revolutionary Horologe, one might mark 
the years and epochs by the successive kinds of exiles 
that walk London streets, and, in grim silent manner, 
demand pity from us and reflections from us. — This 
then extant group of Spanish Exiles was the Trocadero 
swarm, thrown off in 1823, in the Riego and Quirogas 
quarrel. These were they whom Charles Tenth had, 
by sheer force, driven from their constitutionalisms and 
their Trocadero fortresses, — Charles Tenth, who himself 
was soon driven out, manifoldly by sheer force ; and 
had to head his own swarm of fugitives ; and has now 
himself quite vanished, and given place to others. For 
there is no end of them ; propelling and propelled ! — 

Of these poor Spanish Exiles, now vegetating about 
Somers Town, and painfully beating the pavement in 
Euston Square, the acknowledged chief was General 
Torrijos, a man of high qualities and fortunes, still in 
the vigour of his years, and in these desperate circum- 
stances refusing to despair ; with whom Sterling had, at 
this time, become intimate. 



CHAPTER X. 



TORRIJOS. 



Torrijos, who had now in 1829 been here some four 
or five years, having come over in 1824, had from the 
first enjoyed a superior reception in England. Possess- 
ing not only a language to speak, which few of the 
others did, but manifold experiences courtly, military, 
diplomatic, with fine natural faculties, and high Spanish 
manners tempered into cosmopolitan, he had been wel- 
comed in various circles of society ; and found, per- 
haps he alone of those Spaniards, a certain human com- 
panionship among persons of some standing in this 
country. With the elder Sterlings, among others, he 
had made acquaintance ; became familiar in the social 
circle at South Place, and was much esteemed there. 
"With Madam Torrijos, who also was a person of 
amiable and distinguished qualities, an affectionate 
friendship grew up on the part of Mrs. Sterling, which 
ended only with the death of these two ladies. John 
Sterling, on arriving in London from his University 
work, naturally inherited what he liked to take up of 
this relation : and in the lodgings in Regent Street, and 
the democratico-literary element there, Torrijos became 
a very prominent, and at length almost the central 
object. 

The man himself, it is well known, was a valiant 



Chap. X. TORRIJOS. 87 

gallant man ; of lively intellect, of noble chivalrous cha- 
racter : fine talents, fine accomplishments, all grounding 
themselves on a certain rugged veracity, recommended 
him to the discerning. He had begun youth in the 
Court of Ferdinand ; had gone on in Wellington and 
other arduous, victorious and unvictorious, soldierings ; 
familiar in camps and council-rooms, in presence-cham- 
bers and in prisons. He knew romantic Spain; — he was 
himself, standing withal in the vanguard of Freedom's 
fight, a kind of living romance. Infinitely interesting 
to John Sterling, for one. 

It was to Torrijos that the poor Spaniards of Somers 
Town looked mainly, in their helplessness, for every 
species of help. Torrijos, it was hoped, would yet lead 
them into Spain and glorious victory there ; meanwhile 
here in England, under defeat, he was their captain and 
sovereign in another painfully inverse sense. To whom, 
in extremity, everybody might apply. When all pre- 
sent resources failed, and the exchequer was quite out, 
there still remained Torrijos. Torrijos has to find new 
resources for his destitute patriots, find loans, find 
Spanish lessons for them among his English friends : in 
all which charitable operations, it need not be said, 
John Sterling was his foremost man ; zealous to empty 
his own purse for the object ; impetuous in rushing 
hither or thither to enlist the aid of others, and find 
lessons or something that would do. His friends, of 
course, had to assist ; the Bartons, among others, were 
wont to assist; — and I have heard that the fair Susan, 
stirring up her indolent enthusiasm into practicality, 
was very successful in finding Spanish lessons, and the 
like, for these distressed men. Sterling and his friends 
were yet new in this business ; but Torrijos and the 



88 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

others were getting old in it, — and doubtless weary 
and almost desperate of it. They had now been seven 
years in it, many of them ; and were asking, When will 
the end be ? 

Torrijos is described as a man of excellent discern- 
ment : who knows how long he had repressed the unrea- 
sonable schemes of his followers, and turned a deaf ear 
to the temptings of fallacious hope ? But there comes at 
length a sum total of oppressive burdens which is into- 
lerable, which tempts the wisest towards fallacies for re- 
lief. These weary groups, pacing the Euston Square pave- 
ments, had often said in their despair, " Were not death 
" in battle better ? Here are we slowly mouldering 
" into nothingness ; there we might reach it rapidly, in 
" flaming splendour. Flame, either of victory to Spain 
" and us, or of a patriot death, the sure harbinger of vic- 
" tory to Spain. Flame fit to kindle a fire which no Fer- 
" dinand, with all his Inquisitions and Charles-Tenths, 
" could put out." Enough, in the end of 1829, Torrijos 
himself had yielded to this pressure ; and hoping against 
hope, persuaded himself that if he could but land in the 
South of Spain with a small patriot band well armed and 
well resolved, a band carrying fire in its heart, — then 
Spain, all inflammable as touchwood, and groaning in- 
dignantly under its brutal tyrant, might blaze wholly 
into flame round him, and incalculable victory be won. 
Such was his conclusion; not sudden, yet surely not 
deliberate either, — desperate rather, and forced on by 
circumstances. He thought with himself that, consider- 
ing Somers Town and considering Spain, the terrible 
chance was worth trying ; that this big game of Fate, 
go how it might, was one which the omens credibly de- 
clared he and these poor Spaniards ought to play. 



Chap. X. TORRIJOS. 89 

His whole industries and energies were thereupon 
bent towards starting the said game ; and his thought 
and continual speech and song now was, That if he had a 
few thousand pounds to buy arms, to freight a ship and 
make the other preparations, he and these poor gentle- 
men, and Spain and the world, were made men and a 
saved Spain and world. What talks arid consultations 
in the apartment in Regent Street, during those winter 
days of 1829-30; setting into open conflagration the 
young democracy that was wont to assemble there ! Of 
which there is now left next to no remembrance. For 
Sterling never spoke a word of this affair in after days, 
nor was any of the actors much tempted to speak. We 
can understand too well that here were young fervid 
hearts in an explosive condition; young rash heads, 
sanctioned by a man's experienced head. Here at last 
shall enthusiasm and theory become practice and fact ; 
fiery dreams are at last permitted to realise themselves ; 
and now is the time or never ! — How the Coleridge moon- 
shine comported itself amid these hot telluric flames, 
or whether it had not yet begun to play there (which I 
rather doubt), must be left to conjecture. 

Mr. Hare speaks of Sterling e sailing over to St. 
Valery in an open boat along with others,' upon one 
occasion, in this enterprise ; — in the final English scene 
of it, I suppose. Which is very possible. Unquestion- 
ably there was adventure enough of other kinds for it, 
and running to and fro with all his speed on behalf of 
it, during these months of his history! Money was 
subscribed, collected : the young Cambridge democrats 
were all a-blaze to assist Torrijos; nay certain of them 
decided to go with him, — and went. Only, as yet, the 
funds were rather incomplete. And here, as I learn 



90 JOHN STERLING. Pari I. 

from a good Land, is the secret history of their becom- 
ing complete. Which, as we are upon the subject, I 
had better give. But for the following circumstance, 
they had perhaps never been completed ; nor had the 
rash enterprise, or its catastrophe, so influential on the 
rest of Sterling's life, taken place at all. 

A certain Lieutenant Robert Boyd, of the Indian 
Army, an Ulster Irishman, a cousin of Sterling's, had 
received some affront, or otherwise taken some disgust 
in that service ; had thrown up his commission in con- 
sequence ; and returned home, about this time, with 
intent to seek another course of life. Having only, for 
outfit, these impatient ardours, some experience in In- 
dian drill-exercise, and five thousand pounds of inherit- 
ance, he found the enterprise attended with difficulties ; 
and was somewhat at a loss how to dispose of himself. 
Some young Ulster comrade, in a partly similar situa- 
tion, had pointed out to him that there lay in a certain 
neighbouring creek of the Irish coast, a worn-out royal 
gun-brig condemned to sale, to be had dog-cheap : this 
he proposed that they two, or in fact Boyd with his five 
thousand pounds, should buy ; that they should refit 
and arm and man it; — and sail a-privateering "to the 
Eastern Archipelago," Philippine Isles, or I know not 
where ; and so conquer the golden fleece. 

Boyd naturally paused a little at this great proposal ; 
did not quite reject it; came across, with it and other 
fine projects and impatiences fermenting in his head, 
to London, there to see and consider. It was in the 
months when the Torrijos enterprise was in the birth- 
throes ; crying wildly for capital, of all things. Boyd 
naturally spoke of his projects to Sterling, — of his gun- 



Chap. X. TORRIJOS. 91 

brig lying in the Irish creek, among others. Sterling 
naturally said, " If you want an adventure of the Sea- 
" king sort, and propose to lay your money and your life 
" into such a game, here is Torrijos and Spain at his 
" back ; here is a golden fleece to conquer, worth twenty 
" Eastern Archipelagos." — Boyd and Torrijos quickly 
met ; quickly bargained. Boyd's money was to go in 
purchasing, and storing with a certain stock of arms and 
etceteras, a small ship in the Thames, which should carry 
Boyd with Torrijos and the adventurers to the south 
coast of Spain ; and there, the game once played and 
won, Boyd was to have promotion enough, — 'the colo- 
nelcy of a Spanish cavalry regiment,' for one express 
thing. What exact share Sterling had in this negotia- 
tion, or whether he did not even take the prudent side 
and caution Boyd to be wary, I know not ; but it was 
he that brought the parties together ; and all his friends 
knew, in silence, that to the end of his life he painfully 
remembered that fact. 

And so a ship was hired, or purchased, in the Thames ; 
due furnishings began to be executed in it; arms and 
stores were gradually got on board ; Torrijos with his 
Fifty picked Spaniards, in the meanwhile, getting ready. 
This was in the spring of 1830. Boyd's 5000/. was the 
grand nucleus of finance : but vigorous subscription was 
carried on likewise in Sterling's young democratic circle, 
or wherever a member of it could find access ; not with- 
out considerable result, and with a zeal that may be 
imagined. Nay, as above hinted, certain of these young 
men decided, not to give their money only, but them- 
selves along with it, as democratic volunteers and sol- 
diers of progress ; among whom, it need not be said, 
Sterling intended to be foremost. Busy weeks with 



92 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

him, those spring ones of the year 1830 ! Through this 
small Note, accidentally preserved to us, addressed to 
his friend Barton, we obtain a curious glance into the 
subterranean workshop : 

( To Charles Barton, Esq., Dorset Sq., Regent's Park. 

[No date; apparently March or February 1830.] 

( My dear Charles, — I have wanted to see you to 
c talk to you about my Foreign affairs. If you are going 
e to be in London for a few days, I believe you can be 
( very useful to me, at a considerable expense and trouble 
( to yourself, in the way of buying accoutrements ; inter 
6 alia, a sword and a saddle, — not, you will understand, 
' for my own use. 

' Things are going on very well, but are very, even 
f frightfully near ; only be quiet ! Pray would you, in 
( case of necessity, take a free passage to Holland, next 
e week or the week after ; stay two or three days, and 

' come back, all expenses paid ? If you write to B 

6 at Cambridge, tell him above all things to hold his 
' tongue. If you are near Palace Yard to-morrow be- 
' fore two, pray come to see me. Do not come on pur- 
6 pose ; especially as I may perhaps be away, and at all 
6 events shall not be there until eleven, nor perhaps till 
6 rather later. 

( I fear I shall have alarmed your Mother by my 
' irruption. Forgive me for that and all my exactions 
' from you. If the next month were over, I should not 
1 have to trouble any one. — Yours affectionately, 

* J. Sterling.' 

Busy weeks indeed; and a glowing smithy-light 



Chap. X. TORRIJOS. 93 

coming through the chinks ! — The romance of Arthur 
Coningsby lay written, or half-written, in his desk ; and 
here, in his heart and among his hands, was an acted 
romance and unknown catastrophes keeping pace with 
that. 

Doubts from the doctors, for his health was getting 
ominous, threw some shade over the adventure. Re- 
proachful reminiscences of Coleridge and Theosophy 
were natural too ; then fond regrets for Literature and 
its glories : if you act your romance, how can you also 
write it ? Regrets, and reproachful reminiscences, from 
Art and Theosophy ; perhaps some tenderer regrets 
withal. A crisis in life had come ; when, of innumer- 
able possibilities one possibility was to be elected king, 
and to swallow all the rest, the rest of course made noise 
enough, and swelled themselves to their biggest. 

Meanwhile the ship was fast getting ready : on a 
certain day, it was to drop quietly down the Thames; 
then touch at Deal, and take on board Torrijos and his 
adventurers, who were to be in waiting and on the out- 
look for them there. Let every man lay in his accou- 
trements, then ; let every man make his packages, his 
arrangements and farewells. Sterling went to take leave 
of Miss Barton. " You are going, then ; to Spain ? To 
" rough it amid the storms of war and perilous insur- 
" rection ; and with that weak health of yours ; and — 
" we shall never see you more, then !" Miss Barton, 
all her gaiety gone, the dimpling softness become liquid 
sorrow and the musical ringing voice one wail of woe, 
' burst into tears,' — so I have it on authority: — here 
was one possibility about to be strangled that made 
unexpected noise ! Sterling's interview ended in the 



94 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

offer of his hand, and the acceptance of it ; — any sacri- 
fice to get rid of this horrid Spanish business, and save 
the health and life of a gifted young man so precious 
to the world and to another ! 

' 111 health,' as often afterwards in Sterling's life, 
when the excuse was real enough hut not the chief 
excuse ; ' ill health, and insuperable obstacles and en- 
gagements,' had to bear the chief brunt in apologising : 
and, as Sterling's actual presence, or that of any Eng- 
lishman except Boyd and his money, was not in the 
least vital to the adventure, his excuse was at once ac- 
cepted. The English connexions and subscriptions are 
a given fact, to be presided over by what English vo- 
lunteers there are: and as for Englishmen, the fewer 
Englishmen that go, the larger will be the share of in- 
fluence for each. The other adventurers, Torrijos among 
them in due readiness, moved silently one by one down 
to Deal: Sterling, superintending the naval hands, on 
board their ship in the Thames, was to see the last finish 
given to everything in that department; then, on the 
set evening, to drop down quietly to Deal, and there 
say Andate con Dios, and return. 

Behold ! Just before the set evening came, the 
Spanish Envoy at this Court has got notice of what is 
going on : the Spanish Envoy, and of course the British 
Foreign Secretary, and of course also the Thames Po- 
lice. Armed men spring suddenly on board, one day, 
while Sterling is there ; declare the ship seized and em- 
bargoed in the King's name ; nobody on board to stir, 
till he has given some account of himself in due time 
and place ! Huge consternation, naturally, from stem 
to stern. Sterling, whose presence of mind seldom for- 
sook him, casts his eye over the River and its craft ; sees 



Chap. X. TORRIJOS. 95 

a wherry, privately signals it, drops rapidly on board of 
it : " Stop !" fiercely interjects the marine policeman 
from the ship's deck. — " Why stop ? What use have 
you for me, or I for you ?" and the oars begin playing. 
— " Stop, or I'll shoot you !" cries the marine police- 
man, drawing a pistol. — " No, you won't." — " I will !" 
— " If you do, you'll be hanged at the next Maidstone 
assizes, then; that's all," — and Sterling's wherry shot 
rapidly ashore ; and out of this perilous adventure. 

That same night he posted down to Deal ; disclosed 
to the Torrijos party what catastrophe had come. No 
passage Spain- ward from the Thames ; well if arrest- 
ment do not suddenly come from the Thames ! It 
was on this occasion, I suppose, that the passage in 
the open boat to St. Valery occurred ; — speedy flight in 
what boat or boats, open or shut, could be got at Deal 
on the sudden. Sterling himself, according to Hare's 
authority, actually went with them so far. Enough, 
they got shipping, as private passengers in one craft 
or the other ; and, by degrees or at once, arrived all at 
Gibraltar, — Boyd, one or two young democrats of Re- 
gent Street, the fifty picked Spaniards, and Torrijos, — 
safe, though without arms ; still in the early part of the 
year. 



CHAPTER XI. 

MARRIAGE : ILL-HEALTH ; WEST-INDIES. 

Sterling's outlooks and occupations, now that his 
Spanish friends were gone, must have been of a rather 
miscellaneous confused description. He had the enter- 
prise of a married life close before him ; and as yet no 
profession, no fixed pursuit whatever. His health was 
already very threatening ; often such as to disable him 
from present activity, and occasion the gravest appre- 
hensions ; practically blocking up all important courses 
whatsoever, and rendering the future, if even life were 
lengthened and he had any future, an insolubility for 
him. Parliament was shut, public life was shut: Li- 
terature, — if, alas, any solid fruit could lie in Litera- 
ture ! 

Or perhaps one's health would mend, after all; and 
many things be better than was hoped! Sterling was 
not of a despondent temper, or given in any measure 
to lie down and indolently moan : I fancy he walked 
briskly enough into this tempestuous-looking future; not 
heeding too much its thunderous aspects ; doing swiftly, 
for the day, what his hand found to do. Arthur Con- 
ingsby, I suppose, lay on the anvil at present ; visits 
to Coleridge were now again more possible ; grand 
news from Torrijos might be looked for, though only 
small yet came : — nay here, in the hot July, is France, 



Chap. XI. MARRIAGE : ILL-HEALTH. 97 

at least, all thrown into volcano again ! Here are the 
miraculous Three Days; heralding, in thunder, great 
things to Torrijos and others ; filling with babblement 
and vaticination the mouths and hearts of all democratic 
men. 

So rolled along, in tumult of chaotic remembrance 
and uncertain hope, in manifold emotion, and the con- 
fused struggle (for Sterling as for the world) to extri- 
cate the New from the falling ruins of the Old, the 
summer and autumn of 1830. From Gibraltar and 
Torrijos the tidings were vague, unimportant and dis- 
couraging: attempt on Cadiz, attempt on the lines of 
St. Roch, those attempts, or rather resolutions to at- 
tempt, had died in the birth, or almost before it. Men 
blamed Torrijos, little knowing his impediments. Boyd 
was still patient at his post ; others of the young Eng- 
lish (on the strength of the subscribed moneys) were 
said to be thinking of tours, — perhaps in the Sierra 
Morena and neighbouring Quixote regions. From that 
Torrijos enterprise it did not seem that anything con- 
siderable would come. 

On the edge of winter, here at home, Sterling was 
married : ' at Christchurch, Marylebone, 2d November 
1830,' say the records. His blooming, kindly and true- 
hearted Wife had not much money, nor had he as yet 
any : but friends on both sides were bountiful and 
hopeful ; had made up, for the young couple, the foun- 
dations of a modestly effective household ; and in the 
future there lay more substantial prospects. On the 
finance side Sterling never had anything to suffer. His 
Wife, though somewhat languid, and of indolent humour, 
was a graceful, pious-minded, honourable and afiection- 

H 



98 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

ate woman ; she could not much support him in the 
ever-shifting struggles of his life, but she faithfully at- 
tended him in them, and loyally marched by his side 
through the changes and nomadic pilgrimings, of which 
many were appointed him in his short course. 

Unhappily a few weeks after his marriage, and be- 
fore any household was yet set up, he fell dangerously 
ill ; worse in health than he had ever yet been : so many 
agitations crowded into the last few months had been 
too much for him. He fell into dangerous pulmonary 
illness, sank ever deeper ; lay for many weeks in his 
Father's house utterly prostrate, his young Wife and his 
Mother watching over him ; friends, sparingly admitted, 
long despairing of his life. All prospects in this world 
were now apparently shut upon him. 

After a while, came hope again, and kindlier symp- 
toms : but the doctors intimated that there lay con- 
sumption in the question, and that perfect recovery 
was not to be looked for. For weeks he had been con- 
fined to bed ; it was several months before he could 
leave his sick-room, where the visits of a few friends 
had much cheered him. And now when delivered, 
readmitted to the air of day again, — weak as he was, 
and with such a liability still lurking in him, — what 
his young partner and he were to do, or whitherward 
to turn for a good course of life, was by no means too 
apparent. 

One of his Mother Mrs. Edward Sterling's Uncles, 
a Conyngham from Derry, had, in the course of his in- 
dustrious and adventurous life, realised large property 
in the West Indies, — a valuable Sugar-estate, with its 
equipments, in the Island of St. Vincent ; — from which 



Chap. XL WEST-INDIES. 99 

Mrs. Sterling and her family were now, and had been 
for some years before her Uncle's decease, deriving 
important benefits. I have heard, it was then worth 
some ten thousand pounds a year to the parties interest- 
ed. Anthony Sterling, John, and another a cousin of 
theirs were ultimately to be heirs, in equal proportions. 
The old gentleman, always kind to his kindred, and a 
brave and solid man though somewhat abrupt in his 
ways, had lately died ; leaving a settlement to this effect, 
not without some intricacies, and almost caprices, in the 
conditions attached. 

This property, which is still a valuable one, was 
Sterling's chief pecuniary outlook for the distant future. 
Of course it well deserved taking care of ; and if the 
eye of the master were upon it, of course too (accord- 
ing to the adage) the cattle would fatten better. As 
the warm climate was favourable to pulmonary com- 
plaints, and Sterling's occupations were so shattered to 
pieces and his outlooks here so waste and vague, why 
should not he undertake this duty for himself and 
others ? 

It was fixed upon as the eligiblest course. A visit 
to St. Vincent, perhaps a permanent residence there : 
he went into the project with his customary impetu- 
osity ; his young Wife cheerfully consenting, and all 
manner of new hopes clustering round it. There are 
the rich tropical sceneries, the romance of the torrid 
zone with its new skies and seas and lands ; there are 
Blacks, and the Slavery question to be investigated ; 
there are the bronzed Whites and Yellows, and their 
strange new way of life : by all means let us go and 
try! — Arrangements being completed, so soon as his 
strength had sufficiently recovered, and the harsh spring 



100 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

winds had sufficiently abated, Sterling with his small 
household set sail for St. Yincent ; and arrived without 
accident. His first child, a son Edward, now living 
and grown to manhood, was born there, * at Brighton 
in the Island of St. Vincent,' in the fall of that year 
1831. 



CHAPTER XII. 



ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 



Sterling found a pleasant residence, with all its ad- 
juncts, ready for him, at Colonarie, in this ' volcanic 
Isle' under the hot sun. An interesting Isle: a place 
of rugged chasms, precipitous gnarled heights, and the 
most fruitful hollows ; shaggy everywhere with luxu- 
riant vegetation ; set under magnificent skies, in the 
mirror of the summer seas ; offering everywhere the 
grandest sudden outlooks and contrasts. His Letters 
represent a placidly cheerful riding life ; a pensive hu- 
mour, but the thunderclouds all sleeping in the distance. 
Good relations with a few neighbouring planters; in- 
difference to the noisy political and other agitations of 
the rest : friendly, by no means romantic appreciation 
of the Blacks ; quiet prosperity economic and domestic : 
on the whole a healthy and recommendable way of life, 
with Literature very much in abeyance in it. 

He writes to Mr. Hare (date not given) : * The land- 
' scapes around me here are noble and lovely as any 
' that can be conceived on Earth. How indeed could 
* it be otherwise, in a small Island of volcanic moun- 
6 tains, far within the Tropics, and perpetually covered 
' with the richest vegetation ? ' The moral aspect of 
things is by no means so good; but neither is that 
without its fair features. ' So far as I see, the Slaves 
' here are cunning, deceitful and idle ; without any 



102 JOHN STERLING. Part L 

( great aptitude for ferocious crimes, and with very 
( little scruple at committing others. But I have seen 
i them much only in very favourable circumstances. 
' They are, as a body, decidedly unfit for freedom ; and 
6 if left, as at present, completely in the hands of their 
' masters, will never become so, unless through the 
c agency of the Methodists.'* 

In the Autumn came an immense hurricane ; with 
new and indeed quite perilous experiences of West- 
Indian life. This hasty Letter, addressed to his Mother, 
is not intrinsically his remarkablest from St. Vincent : 
but the body of fact delineated in it being so much the 
greatest, we will quote it in preference. A West-Indian 
tornado, as John Sterling witnesses it, and with vivid 
authenticity describes it, may be considered worth look- 
ing at. 

■ To Mrs. Sterling, South Place, Knightsbridge, London. 

« Brighton, St. Vincent, August 28, 1831. 

s My dear Mother, — The packet came in yester- 
? day ; bringing me some Newspapers, a Letter from 
' my Father, and one from Anthony, with a few lines 

* from you. I wrote, some days ago, a hasty Note to my 

* Father, on the chance of its reaching you through Gre- 
6 nada sooner than any communication by the packet ; 
( and in it I spoke of the great misfortune which had 
' befallen this Island and Barbadoes, but from which 
' all those you take an interest in have happily escaped 
' unhurt. 

' From the day of our arrival in the West Indies 

* until Thursday the 11th instant, which will long be a 

* Biography (by Mr. Hare), p. xli. 



Chap. XII. ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 103 

6 memorable day with us, I had been doing my best to 
f get ourselves established comfortably ; and I had at 
c last bought the materials for making some additions 
1 to the house. But on the morning I have mentioned, 
f all that I had exerted myself to do, nearly all the pro- 
i perty both of Susan and myself, and the very house 
1 we lived in, were suddenly destroyed by a visitation 
e of Providence far more terrible than any I have ever 
( witnessed. 

6 When Susan came from her room, to breakfast, at 
i eight o'clock, I pointed out to her the extraordinary 
1 height and violence of the surf, and the singular ap- 
( pearance of the clouds of heavy rain sweeping down 
* the valleys before us. At this time I had so little ap- 
6 prehension of what was coming, that I talked of riding 
( down to the shore when the storm should abate, as I 
( had never seen so fierce a sea. In about a quarter of 
' an hour the House-Negroes came in, to close the out- 
( side shutters of the windows. They knew that the 
' plantain-trees about the Negro houses had been blown 
( down in the night ; and had told the maid-servant 
( Tyrrell, but I had heard nothing of it. A very few 
( minutes after the closing of the windows, I found that 
6 the shutters of Tyrrell's room, at the south and com- 
' monly the most sheltered end of the House, were giv- 
' ing way. I tried to tie them ; but the silk handker- 
' chief which I used soon gave way ; and as I had nei- 
i ther hammer, boards nor nails in the house, I could 
6 do nothing more to keep out the tempest. I found, 
c in pushing at the leaf of the shutter, that the wind re- 
e sisted, more as if it had been a stone wall or a mass of 
' iron, than a mere current of air. There were one or 
' two people outside trying to fasten the windows, and 



104 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

' I went out to help ; but we had no tools at hand : one 
' man was blown down the hill in front of the house, 
1 before my face ; and the other and myself had great 

* difficulty in getting back again inside the door. The 
' rain on my face and hands felt like so much small shot 
s from a gun. There was great exertion necessary to 
1 shut the door of the house. 

( The windows at the end of the large room were 
{ now giving way ; and I suppose it was about nine 
( o'clock, when the hurricane burst them in, as if it 
' had been a discharge from a battery of heavy cannon. 
1 The shutters were first forced open, and the wind 
' fastened them back to the wall ; and then the panes of 
f glass were smashed by the mere force of the gale, with- 
' out anything having touched them. Even now I was 
6 not at all sure the house would go. My books, I saw, 
1 were lost ; for the rain poured past the book-cases, as 
' if it had been the Colonarie River. But we carried a 
( good deal of furniture into the passage at the entrance: 
1 we set Susan there on a sofa, and the Black House- 

* keeper was even attempting to get her some breakfast. 
' The house, however, began to shake so violently, and 
{ the rain was so searching, that she could not stay there 
' long. She went into her own room ; and I staid to 
1 see what could be done. 

' Under the forepart of the house, there are cellars 
' built of stone, but not arched. To these, however, 

* there was no access except on the outside ; and I knew 
1 from my own experience that Susan could not have 
1 gone a step beyond the door, without being carried 
' away by the storm, and probably killed on the spot. 
' The only chance seemed to be that of breaking through 
' the floor. But when the old Cook and myself resolved 



Chap. XII. 



ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 



' on this, we found that we had no instrument with 
' which it would be possible to do it. It was now clear 
( that we had only God to trust in. The front windows 
' were giving way with successive crashes, and the floor 
c shook as you may have seen a carpet on a gusty day 
1 in London. I went into our bed-room ; where I found 
' Susan, Tyrrell, and a little Coloured girl of seven or 
' eight years old ; and told them that we should proba- 
f bly not be alive in half an hour. I could have escaped, 
' if I had chosen to go alone, by crawling on the ground 
( either into the kitchen, a separate stone building at no 
' great distance, or into the open fields away from trees 
1 or houses ; but Susan could not have gone a yard. She 
' became quite calm when she knew the worst ; and she 
( sat on my knee in what seemed the safest corner of the 
' room, while every blast was bringing nearer and nearer 
' the moment of our seemingly certain destruction. 

* The house was under two parallel roofs ; and the 
' one next the sea, which sheltered the other, and us 
' who were under the other, went off, I suppose about 
' ten o'clock. After my old plan, I will give you a 
' sketch, from which you may perceive how we were 
' situated : 



e 


1 1 ( 1 

b b b a- 




c 

a - 


/ 




9 a 


1 


- d 


I 



tn 



d 



i h 



' The a, a are the windows that were first destroyed : 
' b went next ; my books were between the windows b } 



108 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

c and on the wall opposite to them. The lines c and d 
' mark the directions of the two roofs ; e is the room in 
1 which we were, and 2 is a plan of it on a larger scale. 
' Look now at 2 : a is the bed ; c, c the two wardrobes ; 
' b the corner in which we were. I was sitting in an 
i arm-chair, holding my Wife ; and Tyrrell and the little 
( Black child were close to us. We had given up all 
' notion of surviving ; and only waited for the fall of 
{ the roof to perish together. 

6 Before long the roof went. Most of the materials, 
{ however, were carried clear away : one of the large 
( couples was caught on the bed-post marked d, and 
e held fast by the iron spike ; while the end of it hung 
' over our heads : had the beam fallen an inch on either 
c side of the bed-post, it must necessarily have crushed 
1 us. The walls did not go with the roof; and we re- 
6 mained for half an hour, alternately praying to God, 
' and watching them as they bent, creaked, and shivered 
' before the storm. 

( Tyrrell and the child, when the roof was off, made 
1 their way through the remains of the partition, to the 
( outer door ; and with the help of the people who were 
e looking for us, got into the kitchen. A good while 
s after they were gone, and before we knew any thing 
( of their fate, a Negro suddenly came upon us ; and 
e the sight of him gave us a hope of safety. When the 
( people learned that we were in danger, and while their 
' own huts were flying about their ears, they crowded 
' to help us ; and the old Cook urged them on to our 
1 rescue. He made five attempts, after saving Tyrrell, 
' to get to us ; and four times he was blown down. 
' The fifth time he, and the Negro we first saw, reached 
' the house. The space they had to traverse was not 



Chap. XII. ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 107 

e above twenty yards of level ground, if so much. In 
i another minute or two, the Overseers, and a crowd of 
f Negroes, most of whom had come on their hands and 
' knees, were surrounding us ; and with their help, 
6 Susan was carried round to the end of the house ; 
' where they broke open the cellar window, and placed 
6 her in comparative safety. The force of the hurricane 
6 was, by this time, a good deal diminished, or it would 
' have been impossible to stand before it. 

* But the wind was still terrific ; and the rain poured 
' into the cellars through the floor above. Susan, Tyr- 
c rell, and a crowd of Negroes remained under it, for 
' more than two hours : and I was long afraid that the 
f wet and cold would kill her, if she did not perish 
( more violently. Happily we had wine and spirits at 
' hand, and she was much nerved by a tumbler of claret. 
8 As soon as I saw her in comparative security, I went 
' off with one of the Overseers down to the Works, 
6 where the greater number of the Negroes were col- 
' lected, that we might see what could be done for them. 
' They were wretched enough, but no one was hurt ; 
' and I ordered them a dram apiece, which seemed to 
' give them a good deal of consolation. 

' Before I could make my way back, the hurricane 
( became as bad as at first ; and I was obliged to take 
6 shelter for half an hour in a ruined Negro -house. 
f This, however, was the last of its extreme violence. 
' By one o'clock, even the rain had in a great degree 
' ceased ; and as only one room of the house, the one 
' marked /, was standing, and that rickety, — I had Su- 
1 san carried in a chair down the hill, to the Hospital ; 
' where, in a small paved unlighted room, she spent 
f the next twenty -four hours. She was far less in- 



108 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

jured than might have been expected from such a 
catastrophe. 

i Next day, I had the passage at the entrance of the 
house repaired and roofed ; and we returned to the 
ruins of our habitation, still encumbered as they were 
with the wreck of almost all we were possessed of. 
The walls of the part of the house next the sea were 
carried away, in less I think than half an hour after 
we reached the cellar : when I had leisure to examine 
the remains of the house, I found the floor strown 
with fragments of the building, and with broken fur- 
niture ; and our books all soaked as completely as if 
they had been for several hours in the sea. 

c In the course of a few days I had the other room, 
g, which is under the same roof as the one saved, re- 
built ; and Susan stayed in this temporary abode for 
a week, — when we left Colonarie, and came to Brigh- 
ton. Mr. Munro's kindness exceeds all precedent. 
We shall certainly remain here till my Wife is re- 
covered from her confinement. In the meanwhile we 
shall have a new house built, in which we hope to be 
well settled before Christmas. 

( The roof was half blown off the kitchen, but I 
have had it mended already ; the other offices were 
all swept away. The gig is much injured; and my 
horse received a wound in the fall of the stable, from 
which he will not be recovered for some weeks : in 
the meantime I have no choice but to buy another, 
as I must go at least once or twice a week to Colo- 
narie, besides business in Town. As to our own com- 
forts, we can scarcely expect ever to recover from the 
blow that has now stricken us. No money would 
repay me for the loss of my books, of which a large 



Chap. XII. ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. 109 

* proportion had been in my hands for so many years 

* that they were like old and faithful friends, and of 
' which many had been given me at different times by 
' the persons in the world whom I most value. 

s But against all this I have to set the preservation 

* of our lives, in a way the most awfully providential ; 
1 and the safety of every one on the Estate. And I 
' have also the great satisfaction of reflecting that all 
' the Negroes from whom any assistance could reason- 
( ably be expected, behaved like so many Heroes of 
6 Antiquity ; risking their lives and limbs for us and 
( our property, while their own poor houses were fly- 
c ing like chaff before the hurricane. There are few 
' White people here who can say as much for their 
e Black dependents ; and the force and value of the 
' relation between Master and Slave has been tried by 
e the late calamity on a large scale. 

' Great part of both sides of this Island has been 
' laid completely waste. t The beautiful wide and fer- 
' tile Plain called the Charib Country, extending fcr 
' many miles to the north of Colonarie, and formerly 
( containing the finest sets of works and best dwelling- 
e houses in the Island, is, I am told, completely desolate : 
f on several estates not a roof even of a Negro -hut 
' standing. In the embarrassed circumstances of many 
' of the proprietors, the ruin is I fear irreparable. — At 
' Colonarie the damage is serious, but by no means des- 
' perate. The crop is perhaps injured ten or fifteen 
' per cent. The roofs of several large buildings are 
' destroyed, but these we are already supplying ; and 
' the injuries done to the cottages of the Negroes are, 
1 by this time, nearly if not quite remedied. 

' Indeed, all that has been suffered in St. Vincent 



110 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

' appears nothing when compared with the appalling 
' loss of property and of human lives at Barbadoes. 
' There the Town is little but a heap of ruins, and the 
' corpses are reckoned by thousands ; while throughout 
' the Island there are not, I believe, ten estates on 
f which the buildings are standing. The Elliotts, from 
i whom we have heard, are living with all their family 
' in a tent ; and may think themselves wonderfully 
' saved, when whole families round them were crushed 
f at once beneath their houses. Hugh Barton, the only 
' officer of the Garrison hurt, has broken his arm, and we 
' know nothing of his prospects of recovery. The more 
' horrible misfortune of Barbadoes is partly to be ac- 
' counted for by the fact of the hurricane having begun 
' there during the night. The flatness of the surface 
' in that Island presented no obstacle to the wind, which 
' must, however, I think have been in itself more furious 
' than with us. No other island has suffered consider- 
' ably. • 

' I have told both my Uncle and Anthony that I 
f have given you the details of our recent history; — 
1 which are not so pleasant that I should wish to write 
6 them again. Perhaps you will be good enough to let 
' them see this, as soon as you and my Father can spare 
1 it. * * * I am ever, dearest Mother, — your grate- 
' ful and affectionate 

f John Sterling.' 

This Letter, I observe, is dated 28th August, 1831 ; 
which is otherwise a day of mark to the world and me, 
— the Poet Goethe's last birthday. While Sterling 
sat in the Tropical solitudes, penning this history, little 
European Weimar had its carriages and state-carriages 



Chap. XII. ISLAND OF ST. VINCENT. Ill 

busy on the streets, and was astir with compliments and 
visiting-cards, doing its best, as heretofore, on behalf 
of a remarkable day ; and was not, for centuries or tens 
of centuries, to see the like of it again ! — 

At Brighton, the hospitable home of those Munroes, 
our friends continued for above two months. Their 
first child, Edward, as above noticed, was born here, 
' 14th October, 1831 ;' — and now the poor lady, safe 
from all her various perils, could return to Colonarie 
under good auspices. 

It was in this year that I first heard definitely of 
Sterling as a contemporary existence ; and laid up some 
note and outline of him in my memory, as of one whom 
I might yet hope to know. John Mill, Mrs. Austin 
and perhaps other friends, spoke of him with great 
affection and much pitying admiration ; and hoped to 
see him home again, under better omens, from over 
the seas. As a gifted amiable being, of a certain ra- 
diant tenuity and velocity, too thin and rapid and dif- 
fusive, in danger of dissipating himself into the vague, 
or alas into death itself: it was so that, like a spot of 
bright colours, rather than a portrait with features, he 
hung occasionally visible in my imagination. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



A CATASTROPHE. 



The ruin of his house had hardly been repaired, when 
there arrived out of Europe tidings which smote as with 
a still more fatal hurricane on the four corners of his 
inner world, and awoke all the old thunders that lay 
asleep on his horizon there. Tidings, at last of a de- 
cisive nature, from Gibraltar and the Spanish democrat 
adventure. This is what the Newspapers had to report, 
— the catastrophe at once, the details by degrees, — 
from Spain concerning that affair, in the beginning of 
the new year 1832. 

Torrijos, as we have seen, had hitherto accomplished 
as good as nothing, except disappointment to his impa- 
tient followers, and sorrow and regret to himself. Poor 
Torrijos, on arriving at Gibraltar with his wild band, 
and coming into contact with the rough fact, had found 
painfully how much his imagination had deceived him. 
The fact lay round him haggard and ironbound ; flatly 
refusing to be handled according to his scheme of it. 
No Spanish soldiery nor citizenry shewed the least dis- 
position to join him ; on the contrary the official Span- 
iards of that coast seemed to have the watchfullest eye 
on all his movements, nay it was conjectured they had 
spies in Gibraltar who gathered his very intentions and 
betrayed them. This small project of attack, and then 



Chap. XIII. A CATASTROPHE. 118 

that other, proved futile, or was abandoned before the 
attempt. Torrijos had to lie painfully within the lines 
of Gibraltar, — his poor followers reduced to extremity 
of impatience and distress ; the British Governor, too, 
though not unfriendly to him, obliged to frown. As 
for the young Can tabs, they, as was said, had wandered 
a little over the South border of romantic Spain ; had 
perhaps seen Seville, Cadiz, with picturesque views, 
since not with belligerent ones ; and their money being 
done, had now returned home. So had it lasted for 
eighteen months. 

The French Three Days breaking out had armed 
the Guerrillero Mina, armed all manner of democratic 
guerrieros and guerrilleros ; and considerable clouds of 
Invasion, from Spanish exiles, hung minatory over the 
North and North-East of Spain, supported by the new- 
born French Democracy, so far as privately possible. 
These Torrijos had to look upon with inexpressible 
feelings, and take no hand in supporting from the 
South ; these also he had to see brushed away, suc- 
cessively abolished by official generalship ; and to sit 
within his lines, in the painfullest manner, unable to 
do anything. The fated, gallant -minded, but too 
headlong man. At length the British Governor him- 
self was obliged, in official decency, and as is thought 
on repeated remonstrance from his Spanish official 
neighbours, to signify how indecorous, improper and 
impossible it was to harbour within one's lines such ex- 
plosive preparations, once they were discovered, against 
allies in full peace with us, — the necessity, in fact, there 
was for the matter ending. It is said, he offered Torri- 
jos and his people passports, and British protection, to 
any country of the world except Spain : Torrijos did 

i 



114 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

not accept the passports ; spoke of going peaceably to 
this place or to that ; promised at least, what he saw 
and felt to be clearly necessary, that he would soon 
leave Gibraltar. And he did soon leave it ; he and 
his, Boyd alone of the Englishmen being now with him. 

It was on the last night of November 1831, that they 
all set forth ; Torrijos with Fifty -five companions ; and 
in two small vessels, committed themselves to their 
nigh-desperate fortune. No sentry or official person 
had noticed them ; it was from the Spanish Consul, 
next morning, that the British Governor first heard 
they were gone. The British Governor knew nothing 
of them ; but apparently the Spanish officials were much 
better informed. Spanish guardships, instantly awake, 
gave chase to the two small vessels, which were making 
all sail towards Malaga ; and, on shore, all manner of 
troops and detached parties were in motion, to render 
a retreat to Gibraltar by land impossible. 

Crowd all sail for Malaga, then; there perhaps a 
regiment will join us ; there, — or if not, we are but lost ! 
Fancy need not paint a more tragic situation than that 
of Torrijos, the unfortunate gallant man, in the grey 
of this morning, first of December 1831, — his last free 
morning. Noble game is afoot, afoot at last; and all 
the hunters have him in their toils. — The guardships 
gain upon Torrijos; he cannot even reach Malaga; has 
to run ashore at a place called Fuengirola, not far from 
that city; — the guardships seizing his vessels, so soon 
as he is disembarked. The country is all up ; troops 
scouring the coast everywhere : no possibility of getting 
into Malaga with a party of Fifty-five. He takes pos- 
session of a farmstead (Ingles, the place is called) ; bar- 
ricades himself there, but is speedily beleaguered with 



Chap. XIII. A CATASTROPHE. 115 

forces hopelessly superior. He demands to treat ; is re- 
fused all treaty ; is granted six hours to consider, shall 
then either surrender at discretion, or be forced to do it. 
Of course he does it, having no alternative ; and enters 
Malaga a prisoner, all his followers prisoners. Here 
had the Torrijos Enterprise, and all that was embarked 
upon it, finally arrived. 

Express is sent to Madrid; express instantly re- 
turns : ' ' Military execution on the instant ; give them 
shriving if they want it ; that done, fusillade them all." 
So poor Torrijos and his followers, the whole Fifty-six 
of them, Robert Boyd included, meet swift death in 
Malaga. In such manner rushes-down the curtain on 
them and their affair ; they vanish thus on a sudden ; 
rapt away as in black clouds of fate. Poor Boyd, Ster- 
ling's cousin, pleaded his British citizenship ; to no 
purpose : it availed only to his dead body, this was de- 
livered to the British Consul for interment, and only 
this. Poor Madam Torrijos, hearing, at Paris where 
she now was, of her husband's capture, hurries towards 
Madrid to solicit mercy ; whither also messengers from 
Lafayette and the French Government were hurrying, 
on the like errand : at Bayonne, news met the poor lady 
that it was already all over, that she was now a widow, 
and her husband hidden from her forever. — Such was 
the handsel of the new year 1832 for Sterling in his 
West-Indian solitudes. 

Sterling's friends never heard of these affairs ; indeed 
we were all secretly warned not to mention the name 
of Torrijos in his hearing, which accordingly remained 
strictly a forbidden subject. His misery over this ca- 
tastrophe was known, in his own family, to have been 



116 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

immense. He wrote to his Brother Anthony : * I hear 
i the sound of that musketry ; it is as if the bullets 
i were tearing my own brain.' To figure in one's sick 
and excited imagination such a scene of fatal man-hunt- 
ing, lost valour hopelessly captured and massacred ; and 
to add to it, that the victims are not men merely, that 
they are noble and dear forms known lately as individual 
friends : what a Dance of the Furies and wild-pealing 
Dead-march is this, for the mind of a loving, generous 
and vivid man ! Torrijos getting ashore at Fuengirola ; 
Robert Boyd and others ranked to die on the esplanade 
at Malaga— Nay had not Sterling, too, been the inno- 
cent yet heedless means of Boyd's embarking in this 
enterprise ? By his own kinsman poor Boyd had been 
witlessly guided into the pitfalls. " I hear the sound 
* ( of that musketry ; it is as if the bullets were tearing 
i( my own brain !' 5 






CHAPTER XIV. 



PAUSE. 



These thoughts dwelt long with Sterling; and for a 
good while, I fancy, kept possession of the proscenium 
of his mind ; madly parading there, to the exclusion of 
all else, — colouring all else with their own black hues. 
He was young, rich in the power to be miserable or 
otherwise ; and this was his first grand sorrow which 
had now fallen upon him. 

An important spiritual crisis, coming at any rate in 
some form, had hereby suddenly in a very sad form 
come. No doubt, as youth was passing into manhood 
in these Tropical seclusions, and higher wants were 
awakening in his mind, and years and reflection were 
adding new insight and admonition, much in his young 
way of thought and action lay already under ban with 
him, and repentances enough over many things were 
not wanting. But here on a sudden had all repentances, 
as it were, dashed themselves together into one grand 
whirlwind of repentance ; and his past life was fallen 
wholly as into a state of reprobation. A great remorse- 
ful misery had come upon him. Suddenly, as with a 
sudden lightning-stroke, it had kindled into conflagra- 
tion all the ruined structure of his past life ; such ruin 
had to blaze and flame round him, in the painfullest 
manner, till it went out in black ashes. His democratic 



118 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

philosophies, and mutinous radicalisms, already falling 
doomed in his thoughts, had reached their consumma- 
tion and final condemnation here. It was all so rash, 
imprudent, arrogant, all that ; false, or but half-true ; 
inapplicable wholly as a rule of noble conduct ; — and 
it has ended thus. Wo on it ! Another guidance must 
be found in life, or life is impossible ! — 

It is evident, Sterling's thoughts had already, since 
the old days of ( the black dragoon,' much modified 
themselves. We perceive that, by mere increase of ex- 
perience and length of time, the opposite and much 
deeper side of the question, which also has its adaman- 
tine basis of truth, was in turn coming into play ; and 
in fine that a Philosophy of Denial, and world illumi- 
nated merely by the flames of Destruction, could never 
have permanently been the resting-place of such a man. 
Those pilgrimings to Coleridge, years ago, indicate deeper 
wants beginning to be felt, and important ulterior reso- 
lutions becoming inevitable for him. If in your own 
soul there is any tone of the ' Eternal Melodies,' you 
cannot live forever in those poor outer, transitory grind- 
ings and discords ; you will have to struggle inwards 
and upwards, in search of some diviner home for your- 
self ! — Coleridge's prophetic moonshine, Torrijos's sad 
tragedy : those were important occurrences in Sterling's 
life. But, on the whole, there was a big Ocean for 
him, with impetuous Gulf- streams, and a doomed voy- 
age in quest of the Atlantis, before either of those 
arose as lights on the horizon. As important beacon- 
lights let us count them nevertheless; — signal -dates 
they form to us, at lowest. We may reckon this Torri- 
jos tragedy the crisis of Sterling's history; the turning- 
point, which modified, in the most important and by no 



Chap. XIV. PAUSE. 119 

means wholly in the most favourable manner, all the 
subsequent stages of it. 

Old Radicalism and mutinous audacious Ethnicism 
having thus fallen to wreck, and a mere black world of 
misery and remorse now disclosing itself, whatsoever 
of natural piety to God and man, whatsoever of pity 
and reverence, of awe and devout hope was in Sterling's 
heart now awoke into new activity ; and strove for 
some due utterance and predominance. His Letters, 
in these months, speak of earnest religious studies and 
efforts; of prayer, — of attempts by prayer and longing 
endeavour of all kinds, to struggle his way into the 
temple, if temple there were, and there find sanctuary.* 
The realities were grown so haggard; life a field of 
black ashes, if there rose no temple anywhere on it! 
Why, like a fated Orestes, is man so whipt by the 
Furies, and driven madly hither and thither, if it is not 
even that he may seek some shrine, and there make 
expiation and find deliverance ? 

In these circumstances, what a scope for Coleridge's 
philosophy, above all ! " If the bottled moonshine be 
" actually substance ? Ah, could one but believe in a 
" Church while finding it incredible ! What is faith ; 
" what is conviction, credibility, insight ? Can a thing 
" be at once known for true, and known for false ? ' Rea- 
" son,' ' understanding :' is there, then, such an inter- 
" necine war between these two ? It was so Coleridge 
" imagined it, the wisest of existing men !" — No, it is 
not an easy matter (according to Sir Kenelm Digby), this 
of getting up your • astral spirit ' of a thing, and setting 
it in action, when the thing itself is well burnt to ashes. 
* Hare, pp. xliii.-xlvi. 



120 JOHN STERLING.- Part I. 

Poor Sterling ; poor sons of Adam in general, in this 
sad age of cobwebs, worn-out symbolisms, reminiscences 
and simulacra ! Who can tell the struggles of poor 
Sterling, and his pathless wanderings through these 
things ! Long afterwards, in speech with his Brother, 
he compared his case in this time to that of " a young 
" lady who has tragically lost her lover, and is willing 
" to be half-hoodwinked into a convent, or in any noble 
" or quasi-noble way to escape from a world which has 
" become intolerable." 

During the summer of 1832, I find traces of attempts 
towards Anti-slavery Philanthropy ; shadows of exten- 
sive schemes in that direction. Half- desperate outlooks, 
it is likely, towards the refuge of Philanthropism, as a 
new chivalry of life. These took no serious hold of so 
clear an intellect ; but they hovered now and afterwards 
as day-dreams, when life otherwise was shorn of aim ; 
— mirages in the desert, which are found not to be lakes 
when you put your bucket into them. One thing was 
clear, the sojourn in St. Vincent was not to last much 
longer. 

Perhaps one might get some scheme raised into life, 
in Downing Street, for universal Education to the Blacks, 
preparatory to emancipating them ? There were a no- 
ble work for a man ! Then again poor Mrs. Sterling's 
health, contrary to his own, did not agree with warm 
moist climates. And again &c. &c. These were the 
outer surfaces of the measure ; the unconscious pre- 
texts under which it shewed itself to Sterling and was 
shewn by him : but the inner heart and determining 
cause of it (as frequently in Sterling's life, and in all 
our lives) was not these. In brief, he had had enough 



Chap. XIV. PAUSE. 121 

of St. Vincent. The strangling oppressions of his soul 
were too heavy for him there. Solution lay in Europe, 
or might lie ; not in these remote solitudes of the sea, 
— where no shrine or saint's well is to be looked for, 
no communing of pious pilgrims journeying together 
towards a shrine. 



CHAPTER XV. 

BONN ; HERSTMONCEUX. 

After a residence of perhaps fifteen months, Sterling 
quitted St. Vincent, and never returned. He reap- 
peared at his Father's house, to the joy of English 
friends, in August 1832; well improved in health, and 
eager for English news ; but, beyond vague schemes 
and possibilities, considerably uncertain what was next 
to be done. 

After no long stay in this scene, — finding Downing 
Street dead as stone to the Slave- Education and to all 
other schemes, — he went across, with his wife and child, 
to Germany ; purposing to make not so much a tour as 
some loose ramble, or desultory residence in that coun- 
try, in the Rhineland first of all. Here was to be hoped 
the picturesque in scenery, which he much affected ; 
here the new and true in speculation, which he inwardly 
longed for and wanted greatly more ; at all events, here 
as readily as elsewhere might a temporary household be 
struck up, under interesting circumstances. — I conclude 
he went across in the Spring of 1833 ; perhaps directly 
after Arthur Coningsby had got through the press. This 
Novel, which, as we have said, was begun two or three 
years ago, probably on his cessation from the AtJiencBum, 
and was mainly finished, I think, before the removal to 
St. Vincent, had by this time fallen as good as obsolete 



Chap. XV. BONN ; HERSTMONCEUX. 123 

to his own mind ; and its destination now, whether to 
the press or to the fire, was in some sort a matter at 
once of difficulty and of insignificance to him. At 
length deciding for the milder alternative, he had thrown 
in some completing touches here and there, — especially, 
as I conjecture, a proportion of Coleridgean moonshine 
at the end ; and so sent it forth. 

It was in the sunny days, perhaps in May or June 
of this year, that Arthur Coningsby reached my own 
hand, far off amid the heathy wildernesses ; sent by 
John Mill : and I can still recollect the pleasant little 
episode it made in my solitude there. The general 
impression it left on me, which has never since been 
renewed by a second reading in whole or in part, was 
the certain prefigurement to myself, more or less dis- 
tinct, of an opulent, genial and sunny mind, but mis- 
directed, disappointed, experienced in misery; — nay 
crude and hasty ; mistaking for a solid outcome from 
its woes what was only to me a gilded vacuity. The 
hero an ardent youth, representing Sterling himself, 
plunges into life such as we now have it in these an- 
archic times, with the radical, utilitarian, or mutinous 
heathen theory, which is the readiest for inquiring souls ; 
finds, by various courses of adventure, utter shipwreck 
in this ; lies broken, very wretched : that is the tragic 
nodus, or apogee of his life-course. In this mood of 
mind, he clutches desperately towards some new method 
(recognisable as Coleridge's) of laying hand again on 
the old Church, which has hitherto been extraneous 
and as if non-extant to his way of thought ; makes out, 
by some Coleridgean legerdemain, that there actually is 
still a Church for him ; that this extant Church, which 
he long took for an extinct shadow, is not such, but a 



124 



JOHN STERLING. Part I. 



substance ; upon which he can anchor himself amid the 
storms of fate ; — and he does so, even taking orders in 
it, I think. Such could by no means seem to me the 
true or tenable solution. Here clearly, struggling amid 
the tumults, was a lovable young fellow-soul ; who had 
by no means yet got to land ; but of whom much might 
be hoped, if he ever did. Some of the delineations are 
highly pictorial, flooded with a deep ruddy effulgence ; 
betokening much wealth, in the crude or the ripe state. 
The hope of perhaps, one day, knowing Sterling, was 
welcome and interesting to me. Arthur Coning sby, 
struggling imperfectly in a sphere high above circulat- 
ing-library novels, gained no notice whatever in that 
quarter ; gained, I suppose in a few scattered heads, 
some such recognition as the above ; and there rested. 
Sterling never mentioned the name of it in my hearing, 
or would hear it mentioned. 

In those very days while Arthur Coningsby was get- 
ting read amid the Scottish moors, i in June 1833,' Ster- 
ling, at Bonn in the Rhine-country, fell in with his old 
tutor and friend, the Reverend Julius Hare ; one with 
whom he always delighted to communicate, especially 
on such topics as then altogether occupied him. A 
man of cheerful serious character, of much approved 
accomplishment, of perfect courtesy ; surely of much 
piety, in all senses of that word. Mr. Hare had quitted 
his scholastic labours and distinctions, some time ago ; 
the call or opportunity for taking orders having come ; 
and as Rector of Herstmonceux in Sussex, a place 
patrimonially and otherwise endeared to him, was about 
entering, under the best omens, on a new course of life. 
He was now on his return from Rome, and a visit of 



Chap. XV. BONN j HERSTMONCEUX. 125 

some length to Italy. Such a meeting could not but 
be welcome and important to Sterling in such a mood. 
They had much earnest conversation, freely commun- 
ing on the highest matters ; especially of Sterling's 
purpose to undertake the clerical profession, in which 
course his reverend ,friend could not but bid him 
good speed. 

It appears, Sterling already intimated his intention 
to become a clergyman : He would study theology, 
biblicalities, perfect himself in the knowledge seemly 
or essential for his new course ; — read diligently ' for 
a year or two in some good German University,' then 
seek to obtain orders : that was his plan. To which 
Mr. Hare gave his hearty Euge ; adding that if his 
own curacy happened then to be vacant, he should be 
well pleased to have Sterling in that office. So they 
parted. 

' A year or two ' of serious reflection ' in some good 
German University,' or anywhere in the world, might 
have thrown much elucidation upon these confused 
strugglings and purposings of Sterling's, and probably 
have spared him some confusion in his subsequent life. 
But the talent of waiting was, of all others, the one he 
wanted most. Impetuous velocity, all-hoping headlong 
alacrity, what we must call rashness and impatience, 
characterised him in most of his important and unim- 
portant procedures ; from the purpose to the execution 
there was usually but one big leap with him. A few 
months after Mr. Hare was gone, Sterling wrote that his 
purposes were a little changed by the late meeting at 
Bonn ; that he now longed to enter the Church straight- 
way ; that if the Herstmonceux Curacy was still vacant, 
and the Rector's kind thought towards him still held, 



128 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

he would instantly endeavour to qualify himself for 
that office. 

Answer being in the affirmative on both heads, Ster- 
ling returned to England ; took orders, — ( ordained 
deacon at Chichester on Trinity Sunday in 1834' (he 
never became technically priest) : — and so, having fitted 
himself and family with a reasonable house, in one of 
those leafy lanes in quiet Herstmonceux, on the edge 
of Pevensy Level, he commenced the duties of his 
Curacy. 

The bereaved young lady has taken the veil, then! 
Even so. " Life is growing all so dark and brutal ; 
" must be redeemed into human, if it will continue life. 
" Some pious heroism, to give a human colour to life 
" again, on any terms," — even on impossible ones ! 

To such length can transcendental moonshine, cast 
by some morbidly radiating Coleridge into the chaos 
of a fermenting life, act magically there, and produce 
divulsions and convulsions and diseased developments. 
So dark and abstruse, without lamp or authentic finger- 
post, is the course of pious genius towards the Eternal 
Kingdoms grown. No fixed highway more ; the old 
spiritual highways and recognised paths to the Eternal, 
now all torn up and flung in heaps, submerged in un- 
utterable boiling mud-oceans of Hypocrisy and Unbe- 
lievability, of brutal living Atheism and damnable dead 
putrescent Cant : surely a tragic pilgrimage for all mor- 
tals ; Darkness, and the mere shadow of Death, enve- 
loping all things from pole to pole ; and in the raging 
gulf-currents, offering us will-o'-wisps for loadstars, — 
intimating that there are no stars, nor ever were, ex- 
cept certain Old-Jew ones which have now gone out. 



Chap. XV. BONN ; HERSTMONCEUX. 127 

Once more, a tragic pilgrimage for all mortals ; and for 
the young pious soul, winged with genius, and passion- 
ately seeking land, and passionately abhorrent of floating 
carrion withal, more tragical than for any ! — A pilgrim- 
age we must all undertake nevertheless, and make the 
best of with our respective means. Some arrive ; a 
glorious few: many must be lost, — go down upon the 
floating wreck which they took for land. Nay, courage ! 
These also, so far as there was any heroism in them, have 
bequeathed their life as a contribution to us, have 
valiantly laid their bodies in the chasm for us : of these 
also there is no ray of heroism lost, — and, on the whole, 
what else of them could or should be * saved' at any 
time ? Courage, and ever Forward ! 

Concerning this attempt of Sterling's to find sanc- 
tuary in the old Church, and desperately grasp the hem 
of her garment in such manner, there will at present be 
many opinions : and mine must be recorded here in flat 
reproval of it, in mere pitying condemnation of it, as a 
rash, false, unwise and unpermitted step. Nay, among 
the evil lessons ofvhis Time to poor Sterling I cannot but 
account this the worst ; properly indeed, as we may say, 
the apotheosis, the solemn apology and consecration, of 
all the evil lessons that were in it to him. Alas, if we did 
remember the divine and awful nature of God's Truth, 
and had not so forgotten it as poor doomed creatures 
never did before, — should we, durst we in our most 
audacious moments, think of wedding it to the world's 
Untruth, which is also, like all untruths, the Devil's ? 
Only in the world's last lethargy can such things be 
done, and accounted safe and pious ! Fools ! " Do you 
think the Living God is a buzzard idol," sternly asks 
Milton, that you dare address Him in this manner ? — 



128 JOHN STERLING. Part I. 

Such, darkness, thick sluggish clouds of cowardice and 
oblivious baseness, have accumulated on us ; thickening 
as if towards the eternal sleep ! It is not now known, 
what never needed proof or statement before, that Re- 
ligion is not a doubt; that it is a certainty, — or else 
a mockery and horror. That none or all of the many 
things we are in doubt about, and need to have demon- 
strated and rendered probable, can by any alchemy be 
made a e Religion' for us ; but are and must continue a 
baleful, quiet or unquiet, Hypocrisy for us ; and bring 
— salvation, do we fancy? I think, it is another thing 
they will bring ; and are, on all hands, visibly bringing, 
this good while ! — ■ 

The Time, then, with its deliriums, has done its 
worst for poor Sterling. Into deeper aberration it can- 
not lead him ; this is the crowning error. Happily, as 
beseems the superlative of errors, it was a very brief, 
almost a momentary one. In June 1834< Sterling dates 
as installed at Herstmonceux ; and is flinging, as usual, 
his whole soul into the business ; successfully so far as 
outward results could shew : but already in September, 
he begins to have misgivings ; and in February following, 
quits it altogether, — the rest of his life being, in great 
part, a laborious effort of detail to pick the fragments of 
it off him, and be free of it in soul as well as in title. 

At this the extreme point of spiritual deflexion and 
depression, when the world's madness, unusually impres- 
sive on such a man, has done its very worst with him, 
and in all future errors whatsoever he will be a little 
less mistaken, we may close the First Part of Sterling's 
Life. 



LIFE OP JOHN STEELING. 



PART II. 



JOHN STEELING. 



CHAPTER I. 



CURATE. 



By Mr. Hare's account, no priest of any Church could 
more fervently address himself to his functions than 
Sterling now did. He went about among the poor, the 
ignorant, and those that had need of help ; zealously 
forwarded schools and beneficences ; strove, with his 
whole might, to instruct and aid whosoever suffered con- 
sciously in body, or still worse unconsciously in mind. 
He had charged himself to make the Apostle Paul his 
model; the perils and voyagings and ultimate martyr- 
dom of Christian Paul, in those old ages, on the great 
scale, were to be translated into detail, and become the 
practical emblem of Christian Sterling on the coast of 
Sussex in this new age. ' It would be no longer from 
i Jerusalem to Damascus,' writes Sterling, ' to Arabia, 
' to Derbe, Lystra, Ephesus, that he would travel : but 
' each house of his appointed Parish would be to him 
' what each of those great cities was, — a place where he 
' would bend his whole being, and spend his heart for 
' the conversion, purification, elevation of those under 



132 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' his influence. The whole man would be forever at 
6 work for this purpose ; head, heart, knowledge, time, 
f body, possessions, all would be directed to this end.' 
A high enough model set before one : — how to be rea- 
lised ! Sterling hoped to realise it, to struggle towards 
realising it, in some small degree. This is Mr. Hare's 
report of him : 

' He was continually devising some fresh scheme for 
1 improving the condition of the Parish. His aim was 
1 to awaken the minds of the people, to arouse their 
' conscience, to call forth their sense of moral responsi- 
1 bility, to make them feel their own sinfulness, their 
1 need of redemption, and thus lead them to a recogni- 
' tion of the Divine Love by which that redemption is 
' offered to us. In visiting them he was diligent in all 
i weathers, to the risk of his own health, which was 
' greatly impaired thereby ; and his gentleness and con- 
' siderate care for the sick won their affection ; so that, 
6 though his stay was very short, his name is still, after 

* a dozen years, cherished by many.' 

How beautiful would Sterling be in all this ; rushing 
forward like a host towards victory ; playing and pulsing 
like sunshine or soft lightning ; busy at all hours to per- 
form his part in abundant and superabundant measure ! 

* Of that which it was to me personally,' continues Mr. 
Hare, ' to have such a fellow-labourer, to live constantly 

* in the freest communion with such a friend, I cannot 
' speak. He came to me at a time of heavy affliction, 

* just after I had heard that the Brother, who had been 
1 the sharer of all my thoughts and feelings from child- 

* hood, had bid farewell to his earthly life at Rome ; and 
6 thus he seemed given to me to make up in some sort 
' for him whom I had lost. Almost daily did I look 



Chap. I. CURATE. loo 

( out for his usual hour of coming to me, and watch his 
6 tall slender form walking rapidly across the hill in 
e front of my window; with the assurance that he was 
( coming to cheer and brighten, to rouse and stir me, 
' to call me up to some height of feeling, or down to 
i some depth of thought. His lively spirit, responding 
* instantaneously to every impulse of Nature and Art ; 
1 his generous ardour in behalf of whatever is noble and 
1 true ; his scorn of all meanness, of all false pretences 
' and conventional beliefs, softened as it was by com- 
' passion for the victims of those besetting sins of a 
f cultivated age ; his never-flagging impetuosity in push- 
f ing onward to some unattained point of duty or of 
' knowledge : all this, along with his gentle, almost 
' reverential affectionateness towards his former tutor, 
' rendered my intercourse with him an unspeakable 
' blessing ; and time after time has it seemed to me that 
' his visit had been like a shower of rain, bringing down 
1 freshness and brightness on a dusty roadside hedge. 
1 By him too the recollection of these our daily meetings 
' was cherished till the last.'* 

There are many poor people still at Herstmonceux 
who affectionately remember him ; Mr. Hare especially 
makes mention of one good man there, in his young 
days e a poor cobbler,' and now advanced to a much 
better position, who gratefully ascribes this outward 
and the other improvements in his life to Sterling's 
generous encouragement and charitable care for him. 
Such was the curate -life at Herstmonceux. So, in 
those actual leafy lanes, on the edge of Pevensy Level, 
in this new age, did our poor New Paul (on hest of 
certain oracles) diligently study to comport himself, — 
* Hare, xlviii. liv. lv. 



134 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

and struggle with all his might not to be a moonshine 
shadow of the First Paul. 

It was in this summer of 1834, — month of May, 
shortly after arriving in London, — that I first saw Ster- 
ling's Father. A stout broad gentleman of sixty, per- 
pendicular in attitude, rather shewily dressed, and of 
gracious, ingenious and slightly elaborate manners. It 
was at Mrs. Austin's in Bayswater ; he was just taking 
leave as I entered, so our interview lasted only a mo- 
ment : but the figure of the man, as Sterling's father, 
had already an interest for me, and I remember the time 
well. Captain Edward Sterling, as we formerly called 
him, had now quite dropt the military title, nobody 
even of his friends now remembering it ; and was known, 
according to his wish, in political and other circles, as 
Mr. Sterling, a private gentleman of some figure. Over 
whom hung, moreover, a kind of mysterious nimbus 
as the principal or one of the principal writers in the 
Times, which gave an interesting chiaroscuro to his cha- 
racter in society. A potent, profitable, but somewhat 
questionable position ; of which, though he affected, 
and sometimes with anger, altogether to disown it, and 
rigorously insisted on the rights of anonymity, he was 
not unwilling to take the honours too : the private pecu- 
niary advantages were very undeniable ; and his recep- 
tion in the Clubs, and occasionally in higher quarters, 
was a good deal modelled on the universal belief in it. 

John Sterling at Herstmonceux that afternoon, and 
his Father here in London, would have offered strange 
contrasts to an eye that had seen them both. Con- 
trasts, and yet concordances. They were two very 
different-looking men, and were following two very 



Chaf. I. CURATE. 1«S5 

different modes of activity that afternoon. And yet 
with a strange family likeness, too, both in the men and 
their activities ; the central impulse in each, the facul- 
ties applied to fulfil said impulse, not at all dissimilar, 
— as grew visible to me on farther knowledge. 



CHAPTER II. 



NOT CURATE. 



Thus it went on for some months at Herstmonceux ; 
but thus it could not last. We said there were already 
misgivings as to health &c. in September : * that was 
but the fourth month, for it had begun only in June. 
The like clouds of misgiving, flights of dark vapour, 
chequering more and more the bright sky of this pro- 
mised land, rose heavier and rifer month after month ; 
till in February following, that is in the eighth month 
from starting, the sky had grown quite overshaded ; and 
poor Sterling had to think practically of departure from 
his promised land again, finding that the goal of his pil- 
grimage was not there. Not there, wherever it may be ! 
March again therefore ; the abiding city, and post at 
which we can live and die, is still ahead of us, it would 
appear ! 

f Ill-health' was the external cause ; and, to all par- 
ties concerned, to Sterling himself I have no doubt as 
completely as to any, the one determining cause. Nor 
was the ill-health wanting ; it was there in too sad 
reality. And yet properly it was not there as the bur- 
den ; it was there as the last ounce which broke the 
camel's back. I take it, in this as in other cases known 
to me, ill-health was not the primary cause but rather 
* Hare, p. lvi. 






Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 137 

the ultimate one, the summing up of innumerable far 
deeper conscious and unconscious causes, — the cause 
which could boldly shew itself on the surface, and give 
the casting vote. Such was often Sterling's way, as one 
could observe in such cases : though the most guileless, 
undeceptive and transparent of men, he had a notice- 
able, almost childlike faculty of self-deception, and 
usually substituted for the primary determining motive 
and set of motives, some ultimate ostensible one, and 
gave that out to himself and others as the ruling im- 
pulse for important changes in life. As is the way with 
much more ponderous and deliberate men; — as is the 
way, in a degree, with all men ! 

Enough, in February 1834, Sterling came up to 
London, to consult with his physicians, — and in fact in 
all ways to consider with himself and friends, — what 
was to be done in regard to this Herstmonceux business. 
The oracle of the physicians, like that of Delphi, was 
not exceedingly determinate : but it did bear, what was 
a sufficiently undeniable fact, that Sterling's constitu- 
tion, with a tendency to pulmonary ailments, was ill- 
suited for the office of a preacher ; that total abstinence 
from preaching, for a year or two, would clearly be the 
safer course. To which effect he writes to Mr. Hare 
with a tone of sorrowful agitation ; gives up his clerical 
duties at Herstmonceux ; — and never resumed them 
there or elsewhere. He had been in the Church eight 
months in all : a brief section of his life, but an impor- 
tant one, which coloured several of his subsequent years, 
and now strangely colours all his years in the memory 
of some. 

This we may account the second grand crisis of his 



138 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

History. Radicalism, not long since, had come to its 
consummation, and vanished from him in a tragic man- 
ner. " Not by Radicalism is the path to Human No- 
bleness for me !" And here now had English Priest- 
hood risen like a sun, over the waste ruins and extinct 
volcanoes of his dead Radical world, with promise of 
new blessedness and healing under its wings ; and this 
too has soon found itself an illusion : " Not by Priest- 
" hood either lies the way, then. Once more, where does 
" the way lie !" — To follow illusions till they burst and 
vanish is the lot of all new souls who, luckily or luck- 
lessly, are left to their own choice in starting on this 
Earth. The roads are many ; the authentic finger- 
posts are few, — never fewer than in this era, when in 
so many senses the waters are out. Sterling of all men 
had the quickest sense for nobleness, heroism, and the 
human summum bonum ; the liveliest headlong spirit of 
adventure and audacity ; few gifted living men less 
stubbornness of perseverance. Illusions, in his chase 
of the summum bonum, were not likely to be wanting ; 
aberrations, and wasteful changes of course, were likely 
to be many ! It is in the history of such vehement, 
trenchant, far -shining and yet intrinsically light and 
volatile souls, missioned into this epoch to seek their 
way there, that we best see what a confused epoch it is. 
This clerical aberration, — for such it undoubtedly 
was in Sterling, — we have ascribed to Coleridge; and 
do clearly think that had there been no Coleridge, nei- 
ther had this been, — nor had English Puseyism or some 
other strange enough universal portents been. Never- 
theless, let us say farther that it lay partly in the general 
bearing of the world for such a man. This battle, uni- 
versal in our sad epoch, of - all old things passing away' 



Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 139 

against ' all things becoming new,' has its summary and 
animating heart in that of Radicalism against Church ; 
there, as in its flaming core, and point of focal splen- 
dour, does the heroic worth that lies in each side of the 
quarrel most clearly disclose itself; and Sterling was 
the man, above many, to recognise such worth on both 
sides. Natural enough, in such a one, that the light of 
Radicalism having gone out in darkness for him, the 
opposite splendour should next rise as the chief, and 
invite his loyalty till it also failed. In one form or the 
other, such an aberration was not unlikely for him. 
But an aberration, especially in this form, we may 
certainly call it. No man of Sterling's veracity, had 
he clearly consulted his own heart, or had his own 
heart been capable of clearly responding, and not been 
dazzled and bewildered by transient fantasies and theo- 
sophic moonshine, could have undertaken this function. 
His heart would have answered : " No, thou canst not. 
" What is incredible to thee, thou shalt not, at thy 
" soul's peril, attempt to believe ! — Elsewhither for a 
" refuge, or die here. Go to Perdition if thou must, — 
" but not with a lie in thy mouth ; by the Eternal 
" Maker, no!" 

Alas, once more! How are poor mortals whirled 
hither and thither in the tumultuous chaos of our era ; 
and, under the thick smoke-canopy which has eclipsed 
all stars, how do they fly now after this poor meteor, 
now after that! — Sterling abandoned his clerical office in 
February 1835; having held it, and ardently followed 
it, so long as we say, — eight calendar months in all. 

It was on this his February expedition to London 
that I first saw Sterling, — at the India House inciden- 



140 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

tally, one afternoon, where I found him in company 
with John Mill, whom I happened like himself to be 
visiting for a few minutes. The sight of one whose 
fine qualities I had often heard of lately, was interest- 
ing enough ; and, on the whole, proved not disappoint- 
ing, though it was the translation of dream into fact, 
that is of poetry into prose, and shewed its unrhymed 
side withal. A loose, careless-looking, thin figure, in 
careless dim costume, sat, in a lounging posture, care- 
lessly and copiously talking. I was struck with the 
kindly but restless swift-glancing eyes, which looked 
as if the spirits were all out coursing like a pack of 
merry eager beagles, beating every bush. The brow, 
rather sloping in form, was not of imposing character, 
though again the head w T as longish, which is always the 
best sign of intellect ; the physiognomy in general in- 
dicated animation rather than strength. 

We talked rapidly of various unmemorable things : 
I remember coming on the Negroes, and noticing that 
Sterling's notions on the Slavery Question had not ad- 
vanced into the stage of mine. In reference to the ques- 
tion whether an " engagement for life," on just terms, 
between parties who are fixed in the character of mas- 
ter and servant, as the Whites and the Negroes are, is 
not really better than one from day to day, — he said 
with a kindly jeer, " I would have the Negroes them- 
selves consulted as to that!" — and would not in the 
least believe that the Negroes were by no means final 
or perfect judges of it. — His address, I perceived, was 
abrupt, unceremonious ; probably not at all disinclined 
to logic, and capable of dashing in upon you like a 
charge of cossacks, on occasion : but it was also emi- 
nently ingenious, social, guileless. We did all very 






Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 141 

well together : and Sterling and I walked westward in 
company, choosing whatever lanes or quietest streets 
there were, as far as Knightsbridge where our roads 
parted ; talking on moralities, theological philosophies ; 
arguing copiously, but except in opinion not disagreeing. 

In his notions on such subjects, the expected Cole- 
ridge cast of thought was very visible ; and he seemed 
to express it even with exaggeration, and in a fearless 
dogmatic manner. Identity of sentiment, difference of 
opinion : these are the known elements of a pleasant 
dialogue. We parted with the mutual wish to meet 
again ; — which accordingly, at his Father's house and 
at mine, we soon repeatedly did ; and already, in the 
few days before his return to Herstmonceux, had laid 
the foundations of a frank intercourse, pointing towards 
pleasant intimacies both with himself and with his cir- 
cle, which in the future were abundantly fulfilled. His 
Mother, essentially and even professedly " Scotch," 
took to my Wife gradually with a most kind maternal 
relation ; his Father, a gallant shewy stirring gentleman, 
the magus of the Times, had talk and argument ever 
ready, was an interesting figure, and more and more 
took interest in us. We had unconsciously made an 
acquisition, which grew richer and wholesomer with 
every new year ; and ranks now, seen in the pale 
moonlight of memory, and must ever rank, among the 
precious possessions of life. 

Sterling's bright ingenuity, and also his audacity, 
velocity and alacrity, struck me more and more. It was, 
I think, on the occasion of a party given one of these 
evenings at his Father's, where I remember John Mill, 
John Crawford, Mrs. Crawford, and a number of young 
and elderly figures of distinction, — that a group having 



142 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

formed on the younger side of the room, and transcen- 
dentalisms and theologies forming the topic, a number 
of deep things were said in abrupt conversational style, 
Sterling in the thick of it. For example, one sceptical 
figure praised the Church of England, in Hume's phrase, 
as ' a Church tending to keep down fanaticism,' and 
recommendable for its very indifferency ; whereupon a 
transcendental figure urges him : " You are afraid of 
" the horse's kicking : but will you sacrifice all quali- 
" ties to being safe from that ? Then get a dead horse. 
" None comparable to that for not kicking in your 
" stable ! " Upon which, a laugh ; with new laughs on 
other the like occasions; — and at last, in the fire of 
some discussion, Sterling, who was unusually eloquent 
and animated, broke out with this wild phrase, " I could 
" plunge into the bottom of Hell, if I were sure of 
" finding the Devil there and getting him strangled!" 
Which produced the loiidest laugh of all ; and had to 
be repeated, on Mrs. Crawford's inquiry, to the house 
at large ; and, creating among the elders a kind of silent 
shudder, — though we urged that the feat would really 
be a good investment of human industry, — checked or 
stopt these theologic thunders for the evening. I still 
remember Sterling as in one of his most animated moods 
that evening. He probably returned to Herstmonceux 
next day, where he proposed yet to reside for some in- 
definite time. 

Arrived at Herstmonceux, he had not forgotten us. 
One of his Letters written there soon after was the fol- 
lowing, which much entertained me, in various ways. 
It turns on a poor Book of mine, called Sartor Resartus ; 
which was not then even a Book, but was still hanging 
desolately under bibliopolic difficulties, now in its fourth 



Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 143 

or fifth year, on the wrong side of the river, as a mere 
aggregate of Magazine Articles ; having at last been slit 
into that form, and lately completed so, and put toge- 
ther into legibility. I suppose Sterling had borrowed 
it of me. The adventurous hunter spirit which had 
started such a bemired Auerochs, or Urus of the German 
woods, and decided on chasing that as game, struck me 
not a little ; — and the poor Wood-Ox, so bemired in the 
forests, took it as a compliment rather : 

1 To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

i Herstmonceux near Battle, May 29, 1835. 

' My dear Carlyle, — I have now read twice, with 
i care, the wondrous account of Teufelsdrockh and his 
' Opinions ; and I need not say that it has given me 
' much to think of. It falls in with the feelings and 
* tastes which were, for years, the ruling ones of my life ; 
' but which you will not be angry with me when I say 
( that I am infinitely and hourly thankful for having 
' escaped from. Not that I think of this state of mind 
' as one with which I have no longer any concern. The 
' sense of a oneness of life and power in all existence ; 
' and of a boundless exuberance of beauty around us, 
( to which most men are well-nigh dead, is a possession 
' which no one that has ever enjoyed it would wish to 
' lose. When to this we add the deep feeling of the 
1 difference between the actual and the ideal in Na- 
1 ture, and still more in Man ; and bring in, to explain 
' this, the principle of duty, as that which connects us 
' with a possible Higher State, and sets us in progress 
' towards it, — we have a cycle of thoughts which was 
' the whole spiritual empire of the wisest Pagans, and 



144 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

* which might well supply food for the wide specula- 
( tions and richly creative fancy of Teufelsdrockh, or 
( his prototype Jean Paul. 

' How then comes it, we cannot but ask, that these 

* ideas, displayed assuredly with no want of eloquence, 
' vivacity or earnestness, have found, unless I am much 

* mistaken, so little acceptance among the best and 
' most energetic minds in this country ? In a country 
' where millions read the Bible, and thousands Shak- 

* speare ; where Wordsworth circulates through book- 
( clubs and drawing-rooms ; where there are innumer- 
' able admirers of your favourite Burns ; and where 
' Coleridge, by sending from his solitude the voice of 

* earnest spiritual instruction, came to be beloved, studied 
' and mourned for, by no small or careless school of 
' disciples ? — To answer this question would, of course, 
' require more thought and knowledge than I can pre- 
■ tend to bring to it. But there are some points on 
' which I will venture to say a few words. 

1 In the first place, as to the form of composition, — 
6 which may be called, I think, the Rhapsodico-Reflec- 
{ tive. In this the Sartor Resartus resembles some of 
' the master-works of human invention, which have been 
' acknowledged as such by many generations; and es- 
( pecially the works of Rabelais, Montaigne, Sterne and 
' Swift. There is nothing I know of in Antiquity like 

* it. That which comes nearest is perhaps the Platonic 
' Dialogue. But of this, although there is something 
' of the playful and fanciful on the surface, there is in 
( reality neither in the language (which is austerely de- 
f termined to its end), nor in the method and progres- 
' sion of the work, any of that headlong self-asserting 
e capriciousness, which, if not discernible in the plan of 



Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 145 

6 Teufelsdrockh's Memoirs, is yet plainly to be seen in 
' the structure of the sentences, the lawless oddity, and 
' strange heterogeneous combination and allusion. The 
' principle of this difference, observable often elsewhere 
' in modern literature (for the same thing is to be found, 
' more or less, in many of our most genial works of 
f imagination, — Don Quixote, for instance, and the writ- 
' ings of Jeremy Taylor), seems to be that well-known 
( one of the predominant objectivity of the Pagan mind; 
( while among us the subjective has risen into supe- 
' riority, and brought with it in each individual a mul- 
( titude of peculiar associations and relations. These, 
f as not explicable from any one external principle as- 
( sumed as a premiss by the ancient philosopher, were 
( rejected from the sphere of his aesthetic creation : but 
' to us they all have a value and meaning ; being con- 
' nected by the bond of our own personality, and all 
( alike existing in that infinity which is its arena. 

( But however this may be, and comparing the Teu- 
' felsdrockhean Epopee only with those other modern 
1 works, — it is noticeable that Rabelais, Montaigne and 

* Sterne have trusted for the currency of their writings, 
' in a great degree, to the use of obscene and sensual 
' stimulants. Rabelais, besides, was full of contem- 

* porary and personal satire ; and seems to have been 
f a champion in the great cause of his time, — as was 
' Montaigne also, — that of the right of thought in all 
' competent minds, unrestrained by any outward autho- 
' rity. Montaigne, moreover, contains more pleasant 
( and lively gossip, and more distinct good-humoured 
c painting of his own character and daily habits than 
' any other writer I know. Sterne is never obscure, and 
' never moral ; and the costume of his subjects is drawn 

L 



146 



JOHN STERLING. 



Part II 



from the familiar experience of his own time and 
country : and Swift, again, has the same merit of the 
clearest perspicuity, joined to that of the most homely, 
unaffected, forcible English. These points of differ- 
ence seem to me the chief ones which bear against the 
success of the Sartor, On the other hand, there is in 
Teufelsdrockh a depth and fervour of feeling, and a 
power of serious eloquence, far beyond that of any of 
these four writers; and to which indeed there is no- 
thing at all comparable in any of them, except perhaps 
now and then, and very imperfectly, in Montaigne. 

' Of the other points of comparison there are two 
which I would chiefly dwell on: and first as to the 
language. A good deal of this is positively barbarous. 
'■ Environment," " vestural," " stertorous," " visual- 
ised," " complected," and others to be found I think 
in the first twenty pages, — are words, so far as I know, 
without any authority ; some of them contrary to ana- 
logy ; and none repaying by their value the disadvan- 
tage of novelty. To these must be added new and 
erroneous locutions : "whole other tissues" for all the 
other, and similar uses of the word whole; " orients" 
for pearls ; (C lucid" and " lucent" employed as if they 
were different in meaning ; " hulls" perpetually for 
coverings, it being a word hardly used, and then only 
for the husk of a nut ; " to insure a man of misappre- 
hension ;" " talented," a mere newspaper and hustings 
word, invented, I believe, by O'Connell. 

1 I must also mention the constant recurrence of 
some words in a quaint and queer connection, which 
gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive mannerism 
to many sentences. Of these the commonest offender 
is " quite;" which appears in almost every page, and 



Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 147 

' gives at first a droll kind of emphasis ; but soon be- 
1 comes wearisome. " Nay," " manifold," " cunning 
' enough significance," " faculty" (meaning a man's 
' rational or moral power), " special," " not without," 
' haunt the reader as if in some uneasy dream which 
1 does not rise to the dignity of nightmare. Some of 
e these strange mannerisms fall under the general head 
' of a singularity peculiar, so far as I know, to Teufels- 
( drockh. For instance, that of the incessant use of a 
6 sort of odd superfluous qualification of his assertions ; 
' which seems to give the character of deliberateness and 
1 caution to the style, but in time sounds like mere 
' trick or involuntary habit. " Almost" does more than 

* yeoman's, almost slave's service in this way. Some- 
' thing similar may be remarked of the use of the 
' double negative by way of affirmation. 

( Under this head, of language, may be mentioned, 
( though not with strict grammatical accuracy, two stand- 
' ing characteristics of the Professor's style, — at least 
' as rendered into English : First, the composition of 
' words, such as " snow-and-rosebloom maiden : " an at- 
' tractive damsel doubtless in Germany ; but, witk all 
6 her charms, somewhat uncouth here. " Life-vision" 

* is another example ; and many more might be found. 
' To say nothing of the innumerable cases in which the 
' words are only intelligible as a compound term, though 
' not distinguished by hyphens. Of course the compo- 
( sition of words is sometimes allowable even in English : 

* but the habit of dealing with German seems to have 
{ produced, in the pages before us, a prodigious super- 

* abundance of this form of expression ; which gives 
( harshness and strangeness, where the matter would at 

* all events have been surprising enough. Secondly, I 



148 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

f object, with the same qualification, to the frequent use 
' of inversion; which generally appears as a transposi- 

* tion of the two members of a clause, in a way which 
( would not have been practised in conversation. It 
f certainly gives emphasis and force, and often serves 
( to point the meaning. But a style may be fatigu- 
' ing and faulty precisely by being too emphatic, for- 
' cible and pointed ; and so straining the attention to 
e find its meaning, or the admiration to appreciate its 
e beauty. 

( Another class of considerations connects itself with 
1 the heightened and plethoric fulness of the style : its 
' accumulation and contrast of imagery ; its occasional 
' jerking and almost spasmodic violence; — and above 
1 all, the painful subjective excitement, which seems the 
f element and groundwork even of every description of 
( Nature ; often taking the shape of sarcasm or broad 
' jest, but never subsiding into calm. There is also a 
' point which I should think worth attending to, were I 
1 planning any similar book : I mean the importance, in 
( a work of imagination, of not too much disturbing in 
f the* reader's mind the balance of the New and Old. 
( The former addresses itself to his active, the latter to 
e his passive faculty ; and these are mutually dependent, 
' and must co-exist in certain proportion, if you wish to 
( combine his sympathy and progressive exertion with 
' willingness and ease of attention. This should be 
' taken into account in forming a style ; for of course it 

* cannot be consciously thought of in composing each 
6 sentence. 

' But chiefly it seems important in determining the 
1 plan of a work. If the tone of feeling, the line of 
' speculation are out of the common way, and sure to 



Chap. IT. NOT CURATE. 149 

' present some difficulty to the average reader, then it 
' would probably be desirable to select, for the circum- 
' stances, drapery and accessories of all kinds, those 
' most familiar, or at least most attractive. A fable of 
( the homeliest purport, and commonest every-day ap- 
6 plication, derives an interest and charm from its turn- 
1 ing on the characters and acts of gods and genii, lions 
6 and foxes, Arabs and AfFghauns. On the contrary, for 
i philosophic inquiry and truths of awful preciousness, 
( I would select as my personages and interlocutors 
1 beings with whose language and " whereabouts" my 
' readers would be familiar. Thus did Plato in his 
' Dialogues, Christ in his Parables. Therefore it seems 
' doubtful whether it was judicious to make a German 
' Professor the hero of Sartor. Berkeley began his 
' Siris with tar-water ; but what can English readers be 
e expected to make of Gukguk by way of prelibation to 
( your nectar and tokay ? The circumstances and de- 
' tails do not flash with living reality on the minds of 
( your readers, but on the contrary themselves require 
' some of that attention and minute speculation, the 
e whole original stock of which, in the minds of most of 
' them, would not be too much to enable them to follow 
1 your views of Man and Nature. In short, there is not 
' a sufficient basis of the common to justify the amount 
{ of peculiarity in the work. In a book of science, these 
( considerations would of course be inapplicable ; but 
' then the whole shape and colouring of the book must 
' be altered to make it such ; and a man who wishes 
( merely to get at the philosophical result, or summary 
1 of the whole, will regard the details and illustrations 
f as so much unprofitable surplusage. 

i The sense of strangeness is also awakened by the 



150 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

f marvellous combinations, in which the work abounds 
' to a degree that the common reader must find per- 
' fectly bewildering. This can hardly, however, be 
' treated as a consequence of the style ; for the style in 
( this respect coheres with, and springs from, the whole 
' turn and tendency of thought. The noblest images 
' are objects of a humorous smile, in a mind which sees 
f itself above all Nature and throned in the arms of an 

* Almighty Necessity; while the meanest have a dignity, 
f inasmuch as they are trivial symbols of the same one 
' life to which the great whole belongs. And hence, 
1 as I divine, the startling whirl of incongruous juxta- 
' position, which of a truth must to many readers seem 
' as amazing as if the Pythia on the tripod should have 
{ struck up a drinking song, or Thersites had caught the 
' prophetic strain of Cassandra. 

' All this, of course, appears to me true and relevant ; 
' but I cannot help feeling that it is, after all, but a poor 
' piece of quackery to comment on a multitude of phe- 
( nomena without adverting to the principle which lies 
( at the root, and gives the true meaning to them all. 
' Now this principle I seem to myself to find in the 
' state of mind which is attributed to Teufelsdrockh ; 
' in his state of mind, I say, not in his opinions, though 
' these are, in him as in all men, most important, — being 
f one of the best indices to his state of mind. Now 

* what distinguishes him, not merely from the greatest 
' and best men who have been on earth for eighteen 
' hundred years, but from the whole body of those who 
' have been working forwards towards the good, and 
' have been the salt and light of the world, is this : That 
' he does not believe in a God. Do not be indignant, 



Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 151 

* I am blaming no one ; — but if 1 write my thoughts, 
' I must write them honestly. 

* Teufelsdrockh does not belong to the herd of sen- 
( sual and thoughtless men ; because he does perceive in 

* all Existence a unity of power ; because he does believe 
1 that this is a real power external to him and dominant 
' to a certain extent over him, and does not think that 
' he is himself a shadow in a world of shadows. He 
' has a deep feeling of the beautiful, the good and the 
' true ; and a faith in their final victory. 

* At the same time, how evident is the strong inward 
' unrest, the Titanic heaving of mountain on mountain ; 

* the storm-like rushing over land and sea in search of 
' peace. He writhes and roars under his consciousness 
' of the difference in himself between the possible and 
1 the actual, the hoped-for and the existent. He feels 
1 that duty is the highest law of his own being ; and 

* knowing how it bids the waves be stilled into an icy 
' fixedness and grandeur, he trusts (but with a bound- 

* less inward misgiving) that there is a principle of order 
' which will reduce all confusion to shape and clearness. 
' But wanting peace himself, his fierce dissatisfaction 
' fixes on all that is weak, corrupt and imperfect around 
( him ; and instead of a calm and steady co-operation 
' with all those who are endeavouring to apply the high- 
f est ideas as remedies for the worst evils, he holds him- 
' self aloof in savage isolation; and cherishes (though 
' he dare not own) a stern joy at the prospect of that 
' Catastrophe which is to turn loose again the elements 
{ of man's social life, and give for a time the victory to 
' evil ; — in hopes that each new convulsion of the world 
' must bring us nearer to the ultimate restoration of all 

* things ; fancying that each may be the last. Wanting 



152 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

1 the calm and cheerful reliance, which would be the 
' spring of active exertion, he flatters his own distemper 
( by persuading himself that his own age and generation 

* are peculiarly feeble and decayed ; and would even 
i perhaps be willing to exchange the restless immaturity 
' of our self-consciousness, and the promise of its long 
t throe-pangs, for the unawakened undoubting simplicity 
{ of the world's childhood ; of the times in which there 
' was all the evil and horror of our day, only with the 
' difference that conscience had not arisen to try and 
' condemn it. In these longings, if they are Teufels- 
6 drockh's, he seems to forget that, could we go back 
1 five thousand years, we should only have the pro- 
1 spect of travelling them again, and arriving at last at 

* the same point at which we stand now. 

i Something of this state of mind I may say that I 
' understand ; for I have myself experienced it. And 
' the root of the matter appears to me : A want of sym- 
1 pathy with the great body of those who are now endea- 
' vouring to guide and help onward their fellow men. 
( And in what is this alienation grounded ? It is, as I 
6 believe, simply in the difference on that point : viz. 
' the clear, deep, habitual recognition of a one Living 
1 Personal God, essentially good, wise, true and holy, 
' the Author of all that exists ; and a reunion with 
1 whom is the only end of all rational beings. This 
1 belief * * * [There follow now several pages on 
' Personal God,' and other abstruse or indeed properly 
unspeakable matters ; these, and a general Postscript of 
qualifying purport, I will suppress; extracting only the 
following fractions, as luminous or slightly significant 
to us .*] 

1 Now see the difference of Teufelsdrockh's feelings. 



Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 153 

' At the end of book iii. chap. 8, I find these words : 
( " But whence ? O Heaven, whither ? Sense knows 
f not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is through mys- 
' tery to mystery, from God to God. 

s We are such stuff 
' As dreams are made of, and our little life 
i Is rounded with a sleep." 

* And this tallies with the whole strain of his character. 
' What we find everywhere, with an abundant use of 
1 the name of God, is the conception of a formless Infi- 

* nite whether in time or space ; of a high inscrutable 
e Necessity, which it is the chief wisdom and virtue to 
( submit to, which is the mysterious impersonal base 
' of all Existence, — shews itself in the laws of every 
1 separate being's nature ; and for man in the shape 
( of duty. On the other hand, I affirm, we do know 
' whence we come and whither we go ! ' — 

* * * ' And in this state of mind, as there is no 
c true sympathy with others, just as little is there any 
( true peace for ourselves. There is indeed possible 
( the unsympathising factitious calm of Art, which we 
f find in Goethe. Bat at what expense is it bought? 
' Simply, by abandoning altogether the idea of duty, 
4 which is the great witness of our personality. And he 
6 attains his inhuman ghastly calmness by reducing the 
' Universe to a heap of material for the idea of beauty 
( to work on.' — 

* * * ' The sum of all I have been writing, as to 
' the connection of our faith in God with our feeling 
' towards men and our mode of action, may of course 
' be quite erroneous: but granting its truth, it would 
1 supply the one principle which I have been seeking 
1 for, in order to explain the peculiarities of style in 



154 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' your account of Teufelsdrochk and his writings.' 
* * # i The life and works of Luther are the best 
' comment I know of on this doctrine of mine. 

1 Reading over what I have written, I find I have 
( not nearly done justice to my own sense of the genius 
' and moral energy of the book ; but this is what you 
i will best excuse. — Believe me most sincerely and faith- 
( fully yours, 

* John Sterling.' 

Here are sufficient points of f discrepancy with agree- 
ment,' here is material for talk and argument enough ; 
and an expanse of free discussion open, which requires 
rather to be speedily restricted for convenience' sake, 
than allowed to widen itself into the boundless, as it 
tends to do ! — 

In all Sterling's Letters to myself and others, a large 
collection of which now lies before me, duly copied and 
indexed, there is, to one that knew his speech as well, 
a perhaps unusual likeness between the speech and the 
Letters ; and yet, for most part, with a great inferiority 
on the part of these. These, thrown off', one and all of 
them, without premeditation, and with most rapid flow- 
ing pen, are naturally as like his speech as writing can 
well be ; this is their grand merit to us : but on the 
other hand, the want of the living tones, swift looks 
and motions, and manifold dramatic accompaniments, 
tells heavily, more heavily than common. What can 
be done with champagne itself, much more with soda- 
water, when the gaseous spirit is fled ! The reader, in 
any specimens he may see, must bear this in mind. 

Meanwhile these Letters do excel in honesty, in 
candour and transparency; their very carelessness se- 



Chap. II. NOT CURATE. 155 

cures their excellence in this respect. And in another 
much deeper and more essential respect I must like- 
wise call them excellent, — in their childlike goodness, 
in the purity of heart, the noble affection and fidelity 
they everywhere manifest in the writer. This often 
touchingly strikes a familiar friend in reading them ; 
and will awaken reminiscences (when you have the com- 
mentary in your own memory) which are sad and beau- 
tiful, and not without reproach to you on occasion. To 
all friends, and all good causes, this man is true ; behind 
their back as before their face, the same man! — Such 
traits of the autobiographic sort, from these Letters, as 
can serve to paint him or his life, and promise not to 
weary the reader, I must endeavour to select, in the 
sequel. 




CHAPTER III. 



BAYSWATER. 



Sterling continued to reside at Herstmonceux through 
the spring and summer ; holding by the peaceable re- 
tired house he still had there, till the vague future might 
more definitely shape itself, and better point out what 
place of abode would suit him in his new circumstances. 
He made frequent brief visits to London ; in which I, 
among other friends, frequently saw him, our acquaint- 
ance at each visit improving in ail w T ays. Like a swift 
dashing meteor he came into our circle ; coruscated 
among us, for a day or two, with sudden pleasant illu- 
mination ; then again suddenly withdrew, — we hoped, 
not for long. 

I suppose, he was full of uncertainties ; but un- 
doubtedly was gravitating towards London. Yet, on 
the whole, on the surface of him, you saw no uncer- 
tainties; far from that: it seemed always rather with 
peremptory resolutions, and swift express businesses, 
that he was charged. Sickly in body, the testimony said : 
but here always was a mind that gave you the impres- 
sion of peremptory alertness, cheery swift decision, — of 
a health which you might have called exuberant. I re- 
member dialogues with him, of that year ; one pleasant 
dialogue under the trees of the Park (where now, in 
1851, is the thing called i Crystal Palace'), with the 
June sunset flinging long shadows for us; the last of 



Chap. III. BAYSWATER. 157 

the Quality just vanishing for dinner, and the great 
Night beginning to prophesy of itself. Our talk (like 
that of the foregoing Letter) was of the faults of my 
style, of my way of thinking, of my &c. &c. ; all which 
admonitions and remonstrances, so friendly and innocent, 
from this young junior-senior, I was willing to listen 
to, though unable, as usual, to get almost any practical 
hold of them. As usual, the garments do not fit you, 
you are lost in the garments, or you cannot get into 
them at all ; this is not your suit of clothes, it must 
be another's: — alas, these are not your dimensions, 
these are only the optical angles you subtend ; on the 
whole, you will never get measured in that way ! — 

Another time, of date probably very contiguous, I 
remember hearing Sterling preach. It was in some 
new College-chapel in Somerset House (I suppose, what 
is now called Queen's College) ; a very quiet small 
place, the audience student-looking youths, with a few 
elder people, perhaps mostly friends of the preacher's. 
The discourse, delivered with a grave sonorous compo- 
sure, and far surpassing in talent the usual run of ser- 
mons, had withal an air of human veracity as I still 
recollect, and bespoke dignity and piety of mind : but 
gave me the impression rather of artistic excellence 
than of unction or inspiration in that kind. Sterling 
returned with us to Chelsea that day; — and in the after- 
noon we went on the Thames Putney-ward together, 
we two with my Wife ; under the sunny skies, on the 
quiet water, and with copious cheery talk, the remem- 
brance of which is still present enough to me. 

This was properly my only specimen of Sterling's 
preaching. Another time, late in the same autumn, I 
did indeed attend him one evening to some Church in 



158 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

the City, — a big Church behind Cheapside, "built by 
Wren" as he carefully informed me; — but there, in 
my wearied mood, the chief subject of reflection was the 
almost total vacancy of the place, and how an eloquent 
soul was preaching to mere lamps and prayer-books ; 
and of the sermon I retain no image. It came up in the 
way of banter, if he ever urged the duty of ' Church ex- 
tension,' which already he very seldom did and at length 
never, what a specimen we once had of bright lamps, 
gilt prayer-books, baize-lined pews, Wren-built archi- 
tecture ; and how, in almost all directions, you might 
have fired a musket through the church, and hit no 
Christian life. A terrible outlook indeed for the Apos- 
tolic labourer in the brick-and-mortar line ! — 

In the Autumn of this same 1835, he removed per- 
manently to London, whither all summer he had been 
evidently tending ; took a house in Bayswater, an airy 
suburb, half town, half country, near his Father's, and 
within fair distance of his other friends and objects ; and 
decided to await there what the ultimate developments 
of his course might be. His house was in Orme Square, 
close by the corner of that little place (which has only 
three sides of houses) ; its windows looking to the east : 
the Number was, and I believe still is, No. 5. A suffici- 
ently commodious, by no means sumptuous, small man- 
sion ; where, with the means sure to him, he could calcu- 
late on finding adequate shelter for his family, his books 
and himself, and live in a decent manner, in no terror 
of debt, for one thing. His income, I suppose, was not 
large ; but he lived generally a safe distance within it ; 
and shewed himself always as a man bountiful in money 
matters, and taking no thought that way. 



Chap. III. BAYS WATER. 159 

His study-room in this house was perhaps mainly 
the drawing-room ; looking out safe, over the little 
dingy grassplot in front, and the quiet little row of 
houses opposite, with the huge dust -whirl of Oxford 
Street and London far enough ahead of you as back- 
ground, — as back-curtain, blotting out only half y out 
blue hemisphere with dust and smoke. On the right, 
you had the continuous growl of the Uxbridge Road and 
its wheels, coming as lullaby not interruption. Left- 
ward and rearward, after some thin belt of houses, lay 
mere country ; bright sweeping green expanses, crowned 
by pleasant Hampstead, pleasant Harrow, with their 
rustic steeples rising against the sky. Here on winter 
evenings, the bustle of removal being all well ended, 
and family and books got planted in their new places, 
friends could find Sterling, as they often did, who was 
delighted to be found by them, and would give and 
take, vividly as few others, an hour's good talk at any 
time. 

His outlooks, it must be admitted, were sufficiently 
vague and overshadowed ; neither the past nor the fu- 
ture of a too joyful kind. Public life, in any profes- 
sional form, is quite forbidden ; to work wdth his fel- 
lows anywhere appears to be forbidden : nor can the 
humblest solitary endeavour to work worthily as yet 
find an arena. How unfold one's little bit of talent ; 
and live, and not lie sleeping, while it is called Today ? 
As Radical, as Reforming Politician in any public or 
private form, — not only has this, in Sterling's case, 
received tragical sentence and execution ; but the op- 
posite extreme, the Church whither he had fled, like- 
wise proves abortive : the Church also is not the haven 
for him at all. What is to be done ? Something must 



160 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

be done, and soon, — under penalties. Whoever has 
received, on him there is an inexorable behest to give. 
" Fais ton fait, Do thy little stroke of work:" this is 
Nature's voice, and the sum of all the commandments, 
to each man ! 

A shepherd of the people, some small Agamemnon 
after his sort, doing what little sovereignty and guidance 
he can in his day and generation: such every gifted 
soul longs, and should long, to be. But how, in any 
measure, is the small kingdom necessary for Sterling to 
be attained ? Not through newspapers and parliaments, 
not by rubrics and reading-desks : none of the sceptres 
offered in the world's marketplace, nor none of the 
crosiers there, it seems, can be the shepherd's crook for 
this man. A most cheerful, hoping man ; and full of 
swift faculty, though much lamed, — considerably be- 
wildered too ; and tending rather towards the wastes 
and solitary places for a home ; the paved world not 
being friendly to him hitherto ! The paved world, in 
fact, both on its practical and spiritual side, slams-to its 
doors against him ; indicates that he cannot enter, and 
even must not, — that it will prove a choke-vault, deadly 
to soul and to body, if he enter. Sceptre, crosier, sheep- 
crook is none there for him. 

There remains one other implement, the resource 
of all Adam's posterity that are otherwise foiled, — the 
Pen. It was evident from this point that Sterling, 
however otherwise beaten about, and set fluctuating, 
would gravitate steadily with all his real weight towards 
Literature. That he would gradually try with con- 
sciousness to get into Literature ; and, on the whole, 
never quit Literature, which was now all the world for 
him. Such is accordingly the sum of his history hence- 



Chap. III. BAYSWATER. 161 

forth : such small sum, so terribly obstructed and 
diminished by circumstances, is all we have realised 
from him. 

Sterling had by no means as yet consciously quitted 
the clerical profession, far less the Church as a creed. 
We have seen, he occasionally officiated still in these 
months, when a friend requested or an opportunity in- 
vited. Nay it turned out afterwards, he had, unknown 
even to his own family, during a good many weeks in 
the coldest period of next spring, when it was really 
dangerous for his health and did prove hurtful to it, — 
been constantly performing the morning service in some 
Chapel in Bayswater for a young clerical neighbour, a 
slight acquaintance of his, who was sickly at the time. 
So far as I know, this of the Bayswater Chapel in the 
spring of 1836, a feat severely rebuked by his Doctor 
withal, was his last actual service as a churchman. But 
the conscious life ecclesiastical still hung visibly about 
his inner unconscious and real life, for years to come ; 
and not till by slow degrees he had unwinded from him 
the wrappages of it, could he become clear about him- 
self, and so much as try heartily what his now sole 
course was. Alas, and he had to live all the rest of 
his days, as in continual flight for his very existence ; 
f ducking under like a poor unfledged partridge-bird,' 
as one described it, ( before the mower ; darting con- 
' tinually from nook to nook, and there crouching, to 
' escape the scythe of Death.' For Literature Proper 
there was but little left in such a life. Only the small- 
est broken fractions of his last and heaviest-laden years 
can poor Sterling be said to have completely lived. His 
purpose had risen before him slowly in noble clearness ; 

M 



162 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

clear at last, — and even then the inevitable hour was 
at hand. 

In those first London months, as always afterwards 
while it remained physically possible, I saw much of 
him ; loved him, as was natural, more and more ; found 
in him, many ways, a beautiful acquisition to my exist- 
ence here. He was full of bright speech and argu- 
ment ; radiant with arrowy vitalities, vivacities and in- 
genuities. Less than any man he gave you the idea of 
ill-health, Hopeful, sanguine ; nay he did not even seem 
to need definite hope, or much to form any; projecting 
himself in aerial pulses like an aurora borealis, like a 
summer dawn, and filling all the world with present 
brightness for himself and others. Ill-health ? Nay you 
found at last, it was the very excess of life in him that 
brought on disease. This restless play of being, fit to 
conquer the world, could it have been held and guided, 
could not be held. It had worn holes in the outer case 
of it, and there found vent for itself, — there, since not 
otherwise. 

In our many promenades and colloquies, which were 
of the freest, most copious and pleasant nature, religion 
often formed a topic, and perhaps towards the begin- 
ning of our intercourse was the prevailing topic. Ster- 
ling seemed much engrossed in matters theological, and 
led the conversation towards such ; talked often about 
Church, Christianity Anglican and other, how essential 
the belief in it to man ; then, on the other side, about 
Pantheism and such like : — all in the Coleridge dialect, 
and with eloquence and volubility to all lengths. I re- 
member his insisting often and with emphasis on what 
he called a "personal God," and other high topics, of 
which it was not always pleasant to give account in the 



Chap. III. BAYSWATER. 163 

argumentative form, in a loud hurried voice, walking and 
arguing through the fields or streets. Though of warm 
quick feelings, very positive in his opinions, and vehe- 
mently eager to convince and conquer in such discus- 
sions, I seldom or never saw the least anger in him 
against me or any friend. When the blows of contra- 
diction came too thick, he could with consummate dex- 
terity whisk aside out of their way; prick into his ad- 
versary on some new quarter ; or gracefully flourishing 
his weapon, end the duel in some handsome manner. 
One angry glance I remember in him, and it was but 
a glance, and gone in a moment. " Flat Pantheism !" 
urged he once (which he would often enough do about 
this time), as if triumphantly, of something or other, in 
the fire of a debate, in my hearing : " It is mere Pan- 
theism, that!" — "And suppose it were Pot-theism?" 
cried the other: " If the thing is true!" — Sterling did 
look hurt at such flippant heterodoxy, for a moment. 
The soul of his own creed, in those, days, was far other 
than this indifference to Pot or Pan in such departments 
of inquiry. 

To me his sentiments for most part were lovable 
and admirable, though in the logical outcome there was 
everywhere room for opposition. I admired the tem- 
per, the longing towards antique heroism, in this young 
man of the nineteenth century ; but saw not how, ex- 
cept in some German-English empire of the air, he was 
ever to realise it on those terms. In fact, it became 
clear to me more and more that here was nobleness of 
heart striving towards all nobleness ; here was ardent 
recognition of the worth of Christianity, for one thing ; 
but no belief in it at all, in my sense of the word 
belief, — no belief but one definable as mere theoretic 



164 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

moonshine, which would never stand the wind and wea- 
ther of fact. Nay it struck me farther that Sterling's 
was not intrinsically, nor had ever been in the highest 
or chief degree, a devotional mind. Of course all ex- 
cellence in man, and worship as the supreme excellence, 
was part of the inheritance of this gifted man : but if 
called to define him, I should say, Artist not Saint was 
the real bent of his being. He had endless admiration, 
but intrinsically rather a deficiency of reverence in com- 
parison. Fear, with its corollaries, on the religious 
side, he appeared to have none, nor ever to have had 
any. 

In short, it was a strange enough symptom to me of 
the bewildered condition of the world, to behold a man 
of this temper, and of this veracity and nobleness, self- 
consecrated here, by free volition and deliberate selec- 
tion, to be a Christian Priest ; and zealously struggling 
to fancy himself such in very truth. Undoubtedly a sin- 
gular present fact ; — from which, as from their point of 
intersection, great perplexities and aberrations in the 
past, and considerable confusions in the future might 
be seen ominously radiating. Happily our friend, as I 
said, needed little hope. Today with its activities was 
always bright and rich to him. His unmanageable, dis- 
located, devastated world, spiritual or economical, lay all 
illuminated in living sunshine, making it almost beau- 
tiful to his eyes, and gave him no hypochondria. A 
richer soul, in the way of natural outfit for felicity, for 
joyful activity in this world, so far as his strength would 
go, was nowhere to be met with. 

The Letters which Mr. Hare has printed, Letters 
addressed, I imagine, mostly to himself, in this and the 



Chap. III. BAYSWATER. 165 

following year or two, give record of abundant change- 
ful plannings and labourings, on the part of Sterling ; 
still chiefly in the theological department. Translation 
from Tholuck, from Schleiermacher ; treatise on this thing, 
then on that, are on the anvil : it is a life of abstruse 
vague speculations, singularly cheerful and hopeful 
withal, about Will, Morals, Jonathan Edwards, Jew- 
hood, Manhood, and of Books to be written on these 
topics. Part of which adventurous vague plans, as 
the Translation from Tholuck, he actually performed ; 
other greater part, merging always into wider under- 
takings, remained plan merely. I remember he talked 
often about Tholuck, Schleiermacher, and others of that 
stamp ; and looked disappointed, though full of good 
nature, at my obstinate indifference to them and their 
affairs. 

His knowledge of German Literature, very slight at 
this time, limited itself altogether to writers on Church 
matters, — Evidences, Counter -Evidences, Theologies 
and Rumours of Theologies ; by the Tholucks, Schleier- 
machers, Neanders, and I know not whom. Of the true 
sovereign souls of that Literature, theGoethes, Richters, 
Schillers, Lessings, he had as good as no knowledge ; 
and of Goethe in particular an obstinate misconception, 
with proper abhorrence appended, — which did not abate 
for several years, nor quite abolish itself till a very late 
period. Till, in a word, he got Goethe's works fairly 
read and studied for himself ! This was often enough 
the course with Sterling in such cases. He had a most 
swift glance of recognition for the worthy and for the 
unworthy ; and was prone, in his ardent decisive way, 
to put much faith in it. " Such a one is a worthless 
idol; not excellent, only sham-excellent:" here, on this 



166 JOHN STERLING. Pari II. 

negative side especially, you often had to admire how 
right he was; — often, but not quite always. And he 
would maintain, with endless ingenuity, confidence and 
persistence, his fallacious spectrum to be a real image. 
However, it was sure to come all right in the end. 
Whatever real excellence he might misknow, you had 
but to let it stand before him, soliciting new examina- 
tion from him : none surer than he to recognise it at 
last, and to pay it all his dues, with the arrears and 
interest on them. Goethe, who figures as some ab- 
surd high-stalking hollow playactor, or empty orna- 
mental clockcase of an e Artist' so-called, in the Tale of 
the Onyx Ring, was in the throne of Sterling's intellec- 
tual world before all was done ; and the theory of 
* Goethe's want of feeling,' want of &c. &c. appeared 
to him also abundantly contemptible and forge table. 

Sterling's days, during this time as always, were 
full of occupation, cheerfully interesting to himself and 
others ; though, the wrecks of theology so encumbering 
him, little fruit on the positive side could come of these 
labours. On the negative side they were productive ; 
and there also, so much of encumbrance requiring re- 
moval, before fruit could grow, there was plenty of 
labour needed. He looked happy as well as busy : 
roamed extensively among his friends, and loved to 
have them about him, — chiefly old Cambridge comrades 
now settling into occupations in the world ; — and was 
felt by all friends, by myself as by few, to be a welcome 
illumination in the dim whirl of things. A man of al- 
together social and human ways ; his address everywhere 
pleasant and enlivening. A certain smile of thin but 
genuine laughter, we might say, hung gracefully over 
all he said and did ; — expressing gracefully, according 



Chap. III. BAYSWATER. 167 

to the model of this epoch, the stoical pococurantism 
which is required of the cultivated Englishman. Such 
laughter in him was not deep, but neither was it false 
(as lamentably happens often) ; and the cheerfulness it 
went to symbolise was hearty and beautiful, — visible 
in the silent zmsymbolised state in a still gracefuller 
fashion. 

Of wit, so far as rapid lively intellect produces wit, 
he had plenty, and did not abuse his endowment that 
way, being always fundamentally serious in the purport 
of his speech : of what we call humour he had some, 
though little ; nay of real sense for the ludicrous, in any 
form, he had not much for a man of his vivacity ; and 
you remarked that his laugh was limited in compass, 
and of a clear but not rich quality. To the like effect 
shone something, a kind of childlike half-embarrassed 
shimmer of expression, on his fine vivid countenance ; 
curiously mingling with its ardours and audacities. A 
beautiful childlike soul ! He was naturally a favourite 
in conversation, especially with all who had any funds 
for conversing : frank and direct, yet polite and delicate 
withal, — though at times too he could crackle with his 
dexterous petulancies, making the air all like needles 
round you; and there was no end to his logic when 
you excited it ; no end, unless in some form of silence 
on your part. Elderly men of reputation I have some- 
times known offended by him : for he took a frank way 
in the matter of talk ; spoke freely out of him, freely 
listening to what others spoke, with a kind of " hail 
fellow well met" feeling; and carelessly measured a man 
much less by his reputed account in the bank of wit, or 
in any other bank, than by what the man had to shew 
for himself in the shape of real spiritual cash on the 



168 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

occasion. But withal there was ever a fine element of 
natural courtesy in Sterling ; his deliberate demeanour 
to acknowledged superiors was fine and graceful ; his 
apologies and the like, when in a fit of repentance he 
felt commanded to apologise, were full of naivety, and 
very pretty and ingenuous. 

His circle of friends was wide enough ; chiefly men 
of his own standing, old College friends many of them ; 
some of whom have now become universally known. 
Among whom the most important to him was Frederic 
Maurice, who had not long before removed to the 
Chaplaincy of Guy's Hospital here, and was still, as he 
had long been, his intimate and counsellor. Their views 
and articulate opinions, I suppose, were now fast be- 
ginning to diverge ; and these went on diverging far 
enough : but in their kindly union, in their perfect 
trustful familiarity, precious to both parties, there ne- 
ver was the least break, but a steady, equable and duly 
increasing current to the end. One of Sterling's com- 
monest expeditions, in this time, was a sally to the other 
side of London Bridge : " Going to Guy's today." Mau- 
rice, in a year or two, became Sterling's brother-in-law ; 
wedded Mrs. Sterling's younger sister, — a gentle excel- 
lent female soul ; by whom the relation was, in many 
ways, strengthened and beautified for Sterling and all 
friends of the parties. With the Literary notabilities I 
think he had no acquaintance ; his thoughts indeed still 
tended rather towards a certain class of the Clerical; 
but neither had he much to do with these ; for he was 
at no time the least of a tufthunter, but rather had a 
marked natural indifference to tufts. 

The Rev. Mr. Dunn, a venerable and amiable Irish 
gentleman, ' distinguished,' we were told, ' by having re- 






Chap. III. BAYS WATER. 169 

fused a bishopric ;' and who was now living, in an opu- 
lent enough retirement, amid his books and philosophies 
and friends, in London, — is memorable to me among 
this clerical class : one of the mildest, beautifullest old 
men I have ever seen, — " like Fenelon," Sterling said : 
his very face, with its kind true smile, with its look 
of suffering cheerfulness and pious wisdom, was a sort 
of benediction. It is of him that Sterling writes, in 
the Extract which Mr. Hare, modestly reducing the 
name to an initial i Mr. D.,' has given us :* ( Mr. Dunn, 
' for instance ; the defect of whose Theology, com- 
' pounded as it is of the doctrine of the Greek Fathers, 
' of the Mystics and of Ethical Philosophers, consists, — 
1 if I may hint a fault in one whose holiness, meekness 
' and fervour would have made him the beloved disciple 
' of him whom Jesus loved, — in an insufficient appre- 
' hension of the reality and depth of Sin.' A character- 
istic ' defect' of this fine gentle soul. On Mr. Dunn's 
death, which occurred two or three years later, Sterling 
gave, in some veiled yet transparent form, in Black- 
wood's Magazine, an affectionate and eloquent notice 
of him ; which, stript of the veil, was excerpted into 
the Newspapers also.f 

Of Coleridge there w T as little said. Coleridge was 
now dead, not long since ; nor was his name henceforth 
much heard in Sterling's circle ; though on occasion, 
for a year or two to come, he would still assert his 
transcendent admiration, especially if Maurice were by 
to help. But he was getting into German, into various 
inquiries and sources of knowledge new to him, and his 
admirations and notions on many things were silently 
and rapidly modifying themselves. 

* P. lxxviii. f Given in Hare (ii. 188-193). 



JOHN STERLING. 



Part II. 



So, amid interesting human realities, and wide cloud- 
canopies of uncertain speculation, which also had their 
interests and their rainbow-colours to him, and could 
not fail in his life just now, did Sterling pass his year 
and half at Bayswater. Such vaporous speculations 
were inevitable for him at present ; but it was to be 
hoped they would subside by and by, and leave the sky 
clear. All this was but the preliminary to whatever 
work might lie in him: — and, alas, much other inter- 
ruption lay between him and that. 



CHAPTER IV. 



TO BORDEAUX. 



Among the quondam Cambridge acquaintances I have 
seen with Sterling about this time, one struck me, less 
from his qualities than from his name and genealogy : 
Frank Edgeworth, youngest son of the well-known 
Lovell Edgeworth, youngest brother of the celebrated 
Maria Edgeworth, the Irish Novellist. Frank was a 
short neat man ; of sleek, square, colourless face (re- 
sembling the Portraits of his Father), with small blue 
eyes in which twinkled curiously a joyless smile; his 
voice was croaky and shrill, with a tone of shrewish 
obstinacy in it, and perhaps of sarcasm withal. A com- 
posed, dogmatic, speculative, exact, and not melodious 
man. He was learned in Plato and likewise in Kant ; 
well-read in philosophies and literatures ; entertained 
not creeds, but the Platonic or Kantean ghosts of creeds ; 
coldly sneering away from him, in the joyless twinkle 
of those eyes, in the inexorable jingle of that shrill 
voice, all manner of Toryisms, superstitions : for the 
rest, a man of perfect veracity, of great diligence, and 
other worth ; — notable to see alongside of Sterling. 

He is the ' E.' quoted by Mr. Hare from one of 
Sterling's letters ; — and I will incidentally confess that 
the discreet ' B.' of the next leaf in that Volume must, 
if need be, convert himself into ' C.,' my recognisable 



172 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

self namely. Sterling has written there : i I find in all 
1 my conversations with Carlyle that his fundamental 
'' position is, the good of evil : he is forever quoting 
1 Goethe's Epigram about the idleness of wishing to 
i jump off one's own shadow.' — Even so : 

Was lehr" 1 ich dich vor alien Dingen ? — 

Konntest mich lehr en von meiner Schatte zu springen! 

— indicating conversations on the Origin of Evil, or 
rather resolution on my part to suppress such, as wholly 
fruitless and worthless ; which are now all grown dark 
to me ! The passage about Frank is as follows, — like- 
wise elucidative of Sterling and his cloud-compellings, 
and duels with the shadows, about this time : 

i Edgeworth seems to me not to have yet gone be- 
* yond a mere notional life. It is manifest that he 
' has no knowledge of the necessity of a progress from 
' Wissen to Wesen (say, Knowing to Being) ; i and one 
' therefore is not surprised that he should think Kant a 
' sufficient hierarch. I know very little of Kant's doc- 
' trine ; but I made out from Edgeworth what seems to 
1 me a fundamental unsoundness in his moral scheme : 
c namely, the assertion of the certainty of a heavenly 
' Futurity for man, because the idea of duty involves 
{ that of merit or reward. Now duty seems rather to 
' exclude merit ; and at all events, the notion of ex- 
' ternal reward is a mere empirical appendage, and has 
' none but an arbitrary connexion with ethics. — I re- 
f gard it as a very happy thing for Edgeworth that he 
' has come to England. In Italy he probably would 
1 never have gained any intuition into the reality of 
1 Being as different from a mere power of Speculating 
i and Perceiving ; and of course without this, he can 



Chap. IV. TO BORDEAUX. 173 

' never reach to more than the merest Gnosis ; which 
' taken alone is a poor inheritance, a box of title-deeds 
' to an estate which is covered with lava, or sunk under 
( the sea.'* 

This good little Edgeworth had roved extensively 
ahout the Continent ; had married a young Spanish 
wife, whom by a romantic accident he came upon in 
London : having really good scholarship, and conscious- 
ness of faculty and fidelity, he now hoped to find sup- 
port in preparing young men for the University, in tak- 
ing pupils to board ; and with this view, was endeavour- 
ing to form an establishment somewhere in the environs ; 
— ignorant that it is mainly the Clergy whom simple 
persons trust with that trade at present ; that his want of 
a patent of orthodoxy, not to say his inexorable secret 
heterodoxy of mind, would far override all other quali- 
fications in the estimate of simple persons, who are afraid 
of many things, and not afraid of hypocrisy which is 
the worst and one irremediably bad thing. Poor Edge- 
worth tried this business for a while, but found no suc- 
cess at all ; went across, after a year or two, to native 
Edgeworthstown, in Longford, to take the management 
of his brother's estate ; in which function it was said he 
shone, and had quite given up philosophies and specu- 
lations, and become a taciturn grim landmanager and 
county magistrate, likely to do much good in that de- 
partment ; when we learned next that he was dead, that 
we should see him no more. The good little Frank ! 

One day in the spring of 1836, I can still recollect, 
Sterling had proposed to me, by way of wide ramble, 
useful for various ends, that I should walk with him to 
* Hare, pp. lxxiv. lxxii. 



174 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

Eltham and back, to see this Edgeworth, whom I also 
knew a little. We went accordingly together ; walking 
rapidly, as was Sterling's wont, and no doubt talking 
extensively. It probably was in the end of February : 
I can remember leafless hedges, grey driving clouds ; — 
procession of boarding-school girls in some quiet part 
of the route. I very well recollect the big Edgeworth 
house at Eltham ; the big old Palace now a barn ; — in 
general, that the day was full of action ; and likewise 
that rain came upon us in our return, and that the clos- 
ing phasis was a march along Piccadilly, still full of talk, 
but now under decided wet, and in altogether muddy 
circumstances. This was the last walk that poor Sterling 
took, for a great many months. 

He had been ailing for some time, little known to 
me, and too disregardful himself of minatory symptoms, 
as his wont was, so long as strength remained ; and this 
rainy walk of ours had now brought the matter to a 
crisis. He was shut up from all visitors whatsoever ; 
the doctors and his family in great alarm about him, he 
himself coldly professing that death at no great distance 
was very likely. So it lasted for a long anxious while. 
I remember tender messages to and from him ; loan 
of books, particularly some of Goethe's which he then 
read, — still without recognition of much worth in them. 
At length some select friends were occasionally admit- 
ted ; signs of improvement began to appear; — and in 
the bright twilight, Kensington Gardens were green, 
and sky and earth were hopeful, as one went to make 
inquiry. The summer brilliancy was abroad over the 
world before we fairly saw Sterling again sub dio. — Here 
was a fatal hand on the wall; checking tragically what- 
soever wide-drawn schemes might be maturing them- 



Chap. IV. TO BORDEAUX. 175 

selves in such a life ; sternly admonitory that all schemes 
must be narrow, and admitted problematic. 

Sterling, by the doctor's order, took to daily riding 
in summer ; scouring far and wide on a swift strong 
horse, and was allowed no other exercise ; so that my 
walks with him had, to my sorrow, ended. We saw 
him otherwise pretty often ; but it was only for moments 
in comparison. His life, at any rate, in these circum- 
stances was naturally devoid of composure. The little 
Bayswater establishment, with all its schemes of peace- 
able activity on the small or on the great scale, was 
evidently set adrift ; the anchor lifted, and Sterling and 
his family again at sea, for farther uncertain voyaging. 
Here is not thy rest; not here: — where, then! The 
question, What to do even for next autumn ? had be- 
come the pressing one. 

A rich Bordeaux merchant, an Uncle of his Wife's, 
of the name of Mr. Johnston, possessed a sumptuous 
mansion and grounds, which he did not occupy, in 
the environs of that southern City: it was judged that 
the climate might be favourable ; to the house and its 
copious accommodation there was welcome ingress, if 
Sterling chose to occupy it. Servants were not needed, 
servants and conveniences enough, in the big solitary 
mansion with its marble terraces, were already there. 
Conveniences enough within, and curiosities without. 
It is the ' South of France,' with its Gascon ways; the 
Garonne, Garumna river, the Gironde and Montaigne's 
country : here truly are invitations. 

In short, it was decided that he and his family should 
move thither ; there, under warmer skies, begin a new 
residence. The doctors promised improvement, if the 
place suited for a permanency; there at least, much 



176 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

more commodiously than elsewhere, he might put over 
the rigorous period of this present year. Sterling left 
us, I find noted, ' on the first of August 1836.' The 
name of his fine foreign mansion is Belsito ; in the 
village of Floirac, within short distance of Bordeaux. 

Counting in his voyage to the West Indies, this 
is the second of some five health-journeys which, some- 
times with his family, sometimes without, he had to 
make in all. c Five forced peregrinities ;' which, in 
their sad and barren alternation, are the main incidents 
of his much -obstructed life henceforth. Five swift 
flights, not for any high or low object in life, but for 
life itself; swift jerkings aside from whatever path or 
object you might be following, to escape the scythe of 
Death. On such terms had poor Sterling henceforth 
to live ; and surely with less complaint, with whatever 
result otherwise, no man could do it. 

His health prospered at Bordeaux. He had, of 
course, new interests and objects of curiosity ; but when 
once the househoM was settled in its new moorings, and 
the first dazzle of strangeness fairly over, he returned 
to his employments and pursuits, — which were, in good 
part, essentially the old ones. His chosen books, fa- 
vourite instructors of the period, were with him ; at least 
the world of his own thoughts was with him, and the 
grand ever-recurring question : What to do with that ; 
How best to regulate that. 

I remember kind and happy-looking Letters from 
him at Bordeaux, rich enough in interests and projects, 
in activities and emotions. He looked abroad over the 
Gironde country, over the towers and quais of Bordeaux 
at least with a painter's eye, which he rather eminently 



Chap. IV. TO BORDEAUX. 177 

had, and very eminently loved to exercise. Of human 
acquaintances he found not many to attract him, nor 
could he well go much into deeper than pictorial con- 
nection with the scene around him ; but on this side 
too, he was, as usual, open and willing. A learned 
young German, tutor in some family of the neighbour- 
hood, was admitted frequently to see him ; probably the 
only scholar in those parts with whom he could converse 
of an evening. One of my Letters contained notice of 
a pilgrimage he had made to the old Chateau of Mon- 
taigne ; a highly interesting sight to a reading man. 
He wrote to me also about the Caves of St. Emilion 
or Libourne, hiding-place of Barbaroux, Petion and 
other Girondins, concerning whom I was then writing. 
Nay here is the Letter itself still left ; and I may as well 
insert it, as a relic of that time. The projected * walk- 
ing expedition' into France; the vision of Montaigne's 
old House, Barbaroux's death-scene ; the Chinese lu- 
Kiao-Li or Two Fair Cousins : all these things are long 
since asleep, as if dead ; and affect one's own mind with 
a sense of strangeness when resuscitated : 

* To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

' Belsito, near Bordeaux, October 26, 1836. 

' My dear Carlyle, — I have to thank you for 
' two Letters, which, unlike other people's, have the 
* writer's signature in every word as well as at the end. 
6 Your assurances of remembrance and kindness were 
' by no means necessary, but are not at all less pleasant. 
' The patronage you bestow on my old stick requires the 
' acknowledgment from me which my care of its edu- 
' cation had not succeeded in teaching it to express for 

N 



178 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' itself. May your more genial and more masculine 
c treatment be more effectual ! I remember that I used 
' to fling it along the broad walk in Kensington Gar- 
e dens, for Edward to run after it ; and I suspect you 
1 will find the scars resulting from the process, on the 
1 top of the hook. 

i If the purveyors of religion and its implements to 
' this department of France supplied such commodities 
i as waxen hecatombs, I would sacrifice one for the 
' accomplishment of your pedestrian design ; and am 
' already meditating an appropriate invocation, sermone 
1 pedestri. Pray come, in the first fine days of spring ; 
' or rather let us look forward to your coming, for as to 
i the fact, where may both or either of us be before this 
' day six months ? I am not, however, resolute as to 
c any plan of my own that would take me either along 
f the finite or the infinite sea. I still bear up, and do 
' my best here ; and have no distinct schemes of depar- 
1 ture : for I am well, and well situated at present, and 
1 enjoy my books, my leisure, and the size and comfort 
' of the house I live in. I shall go, if go I must ; and not 
6 otherwise. I have sometimes thought that, if driven 

* away later in the year, I might try Italy, — probably 
1 at first Pisa ; and if so, should hope, in spite of cho- 
' lera, to see your Brother, who would be helpful both 

• to mind and body. When you write to him, pray just 
1 touch with your pen the long cobweb thread that con- 
' nects me with him, and which is more visible and pal- 
1 pable about eighteen inches above your writing-table 
' than anywhere else in this much-becobwebbed world. 

' Your account of the particular net you occupy 
' in the great reticulation is not very consolatory ; — I 
' should be sorry if it were from thinking of it as a sort 



Chap. IV. TO BORDEAUX. 179 

1 of paries proximus. When you slip the collar of the 
■ French Revolution, and the fine weather comes round 
s again, and my life becomes insurable at less than fifty 
c per cent, I hope to see you as merry as Philina or her 
' husband, in spite of your having somewhat more wis- 
( dom. — And all these good things may be, in some 
( twenty-six weeks or less ; a space of time for which 
' the paltriest Dutch clock would be warranted to go, 
f without more than an hour or two of daily variation. 
' I trust we have, both of us, souls above those that 

* tick in country kitchens ! — Of your Wife I think you 
1 say nothing in your last. Why does she not write to 

* me ? Is it because she will not stoop to nonsense, and 
' that would be the only proper answer to an uncanoni- 
i cal epistle I sent her while in Scotland ? Tell her she 
' is, at all events, sure of being constantly remembered ; 

* for I play backgammon with Charles Barton for want 
' of any one to play chess with. 

' Of my expedition to Montaigne's old House I can- 

* not say much : for I indited Notes thereof for my own 

* use, and also wrote something about it to Mr. Dunn ; 
' which is as much as the old walls would well bear. It 
f is truly an interesting place ; for it does not seem as 

* if a stone had been touched since Montaigne's time ; 
' though his house is still inhabited, and the apartment 
1 that he describes in the Essai des Trois Commerces 
f might, barring the evident antiquity, have been built 
1 yesterday to realise his account. The rafters of the 
6 room which was his library have still his inscriptions 
( on their lower faces : all very characteristic ; many from 
' Ecclesiastes. The view is open all round ; over a ra- 
' ther flat, elevated country, apparently clayey ploughed 



180 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

1 lands, with little wood, no look of great population, 
' and here and there a small stone windmill with a 
1 conical roof. The village church close by is much 
1 older than Montaigne's day. His house looks just as 
' he describes it : a considerable building that never 
' was at all fortified. 

6 St. Emilion I had not time to see or learn much 
e of; but the place looks all very old. A very small 
' town, built of stone; jostled into a sort of ravine, or 
1 large quarry, in the slope from the higher table-land 
( towards the Dordogne. Quite on the ridge, at the 
{ top of the town, is an immense Gothic steeple, that 
c would suit a cathedral, but has under it only a church 
' (now abandoned) cut out in the sandstone rock, and 
' of great height and size. There is a large church 
' above ground close by, and several monastic buildings. 
( Of the Caves I only saw some entrances. I fancy they 
1 are all artificial, but am not sure. The Dordogne is 
' in sight below in the plain. I cannot lay my hands on 
' any Book for you which gives an account of the time 
1 the Girondins spent here ; or who precisely those were 
1 that made this their hiding-place. 

6 I was prepared for what you say of Mirabeau and 
1 its postponement, from an advertisement of the Arti- 
' cles, in the Times : — but this I only saw the day after 
1 I had written to Paris to order the new Number' of 
the London-and- Westminster ( by mail ; so I consider 
1 the Editor in my debt for ten or twelve francs of 
1 postage, which I hope to recover when we get our 
* equitable adjustment of all things in this world. 

' I have now read through Saint Simon's twenty 
1 volumes ; which have well repaid me. The picture of 
' the daily detail of a despotic court is something quite 



Chap. IV. TO BORDEAUX. 181 

' startling from its vividness and reality ; and there is 

* perhaps a much deeper interest in his innumerable 
' portraits and biographies, — many of which, told in 
( the quietest way, are appalling tragedies ; and the 
•' best, I think, have something painful and delirious 
' about them. I have also lounged a good deal over 
' the Biographie Universelle and Bayle. The last I 
( never looked into before. One would think he had 
' spent his whole life in the Younger Pliny's windowless 
' study ; had never seen, except by candlelight ; and 

* thought the Universe a very good raw -material for 

* books. But he is an amiable honest man ; and more 
' good material than enough was spent in making the 
1 case for that logical wheel work of his. As to the 
' Biographie Universelle, you know it better than I. 
' I wish Craik, or some such man, could be employed 
' on an English edition, in which the British lives 
' should be better done. — I sent for the Chinese Cousins 
' as soon as I received your Letter ; but the answer was, 
1 that the book is out of print. 

1 Have you seen the last Number of the Foreign 
' Review ; where there is an article on Eckermann's 
' Conversations of Goethe, written by a stupid man, but 
' giving extracts of much interest. Goethe's talk has 
1 been running in my head for the last fortnight; and 
' I find I am more inclined than I was to value the 
' flowers that grow (as on the Alps) on the margin of 
' his glaciers. I shall read his Dichtung und Wahrheit, 
( and Italian Tour, when the books come in my way. 
' But I have still little hope of finding in him what I 
6 should look for in Jean Paul, and what I possess in 
' some others : a ground prolonging and encircling that 

* on which I myself rest. 



182 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

f I suppose the dramatic projects of Henry Taylor 

* (to whom remember me cordially) are mainly Thomas 
1 a Becket. I too have been scheming Tragedies and 
' Novels ; — but with little notion of doing more than 
' play the cloud-compeller, for want of more substantial 
' work on earth. I do not know why, but my thoughts 

* have, since I reached this, been running more on His- 
{ tory and Poetry than on Theology and Philosophy, 
' more indeed than for years past. I suppose it is a 
( providential arrangement, that I may find out I am 
' good for as little in the one way as the other. — In the 
( meantime do not let my monopoly of your correspon- 
1 dence be only a nominal privilege. Accept my Wife's 
' kindest remembrances ; give my love to yours. Tell 
1 me if I can do anything for you. Do not let the ides 

* of March go by without starting for the Garonne : — 
6 and believe me, — Yours jusqu'a la mort sans phrase, 

s John Sterling.' 

" La mort sans phrase" was Sieyes's vote in the Trial 
of Louis. Sterling's l Notes for his own use,' which are 
here mentioned in reference to that Montaigne pilgrim- 
age of his, were employed not long after, in an Essay on 
Montaigne.* He also read the Chinese Cousins, and loved 
it,— as I had expected. Of which take this memoran- 
dum : e lu-Kiao-Li, ou les Deux Cousines ; translated by 
■ Remusat ; — well translated into English also, from his 
' version ; and one of the notablest Chinese books. A 
1 book in fact by a Chinese man of genius ; most strangely 
i but recognisably such, — man of genius made on the 
( dragon pattern ! Recommended to me by Carlyle ; 

* London and Westminster Review ; Hare, i. 129. 



Chap. IV. TO BORDEAUX. 183 

* to trim by Leigh Hunt.' The other points need no 
explanation. 

By this time, I conclude, as indeed this Letter indi- 
cates, the theological tumult was decidedly abating in 
him ; to which result this still hermit-life in the Gi- 
ronde would undoubtedly contribute. Tholuck, Schlei- 
ermacher, and the war of articles and rubrics, were left 
in the far distance ; Nature's blue skies, and awful eter- 
nal verities, were once more around one, and small still 
voices, admonitory of many things, could in the beauti- 
ful solitude freely reach the heart. Theologies, rubrics, 
surplices, church-articles, and this enormous ever-re- 
peated thrashing of the straw ? A world of rotten 
straw ; thrashed all into powder ; filling the Universe 
and blotting out the stars and worlds : — Heaven pity 
you with such a thrashingfloor for world, and its drag- 
gled dirty farthing -candle for sun! There is surely 
other worship possible for the heart of man ; there 
should be other work, or none at all, for the intellect 
and creative faculty of man ! — 

It was here, I find, that Literature first again deci- 
sively began to dawn on Sterling as the goal he ought 
to aim at. To this, with his poor broken opportunities 
and such inward faculties as were given him, it became 
gradually clearer that he ought altogether to apply him- 
self. Such result was now decisively beginning for him ; 
the original bent of his mind, the dim mandate of all 
the facts in his outward and inward condition ; evidently 
the one wholesome tendency for him, which grew ever 
clearer to the end of his course, and gave at least one 
steady element, and that the central one, in his fluctu- 
ating existence henceforth. It was years still before 



1&4 JOHN STERLING. Pari II. 

he got the inky tints of that Coleridgean adventure 
completely bleached from his mind ; but here the pro- 
cess had begun, — and I doubt not, we have to thank 
the solitude of Floirac for it a little ; which is some 
consolation for the illness that sent him thither. 

His best hours here were occupied in purely literary 
occupations ; in attempts at composition on his own 
footing again. Unluckily in this too the road for him 
was now far away, after so many years of aberration ; 
true road not to be found all at once. But at least he 
was seeking it again. The Sextons Daughter, which he 
composed here this season, did by no means altogether 
please us as a Poem ; but it was, or deserved to be, 
very welcome as a symptom of spiritual return to the 
open air. Adieu ye thrashingrloors of rotten straw, 
with bleared tallow-light for sun ; to you adieu ! The 
angry sordid dust-whirlwinds begin to allay themselves ; 
settle into soil underfoot, where their place is : glimpses, 
call them distant intimations still much veiled, of the 
everlasting azure, and a much higher and wider priest- 
hood than that under copes and mitres, and wretched 
dead mediagval monkeries and extinct traditions. This 
was perhaps the chief intellectual result of Sterling's 
residence at Bordeaux, and flight to the Gironde in 
pursuit of health ; which does not otherwise deserve to 
count as an epoch or chapter with him. 

In the course of the summer and autumn 1837, I 
do not now find at what exact dates, he made two jour- 
neys from Bordeaux to England ; the first by himself, 
on various small specific businesses, and uncertain out- 
looks ; the second with his family, having at last, after 
hesitation, decided on removal from those parts. ' The 






Chap. IV. TO BORDEAUX. 185 

cholera had come to France ;' — add to which, I suppose 
his solitude at Belsito was growing irksome, and home 
and merry England, in comparison with the monotony 
of the Grironde, had again grown inviting. He had 
vaguely purposed to make for Nice in the coming win- 
ter ; bat that also the cholera or other causes prevented. 
His Brother Anthony, a gallant young soldier, was now 
in England, home from the Ionian Islands on a visit to 
old friends and scenes ; and that doubtless was a new 
and strong inducement hitherward. It was this sum- 
mer, I think, that the two Brothers revisited together 
the scene of their early boyhood at Llanblethian ; a 
touching pilgrimage, of which John gave me account in 
reference to something similar of my own in Scotland, 
where I then was. 

Here, in a Letter to his Mother, is notice of his 
return from the first of these sallies into England ; and 
how doubtful all at Bordeaux still was, and how plea- 
sant some little certainties at, home. The l Annie' of 
whose ' engagement' there is mention, was Miss Anna 
Barton, Mrs. John Sterling's younger sister, who, to 
the joy of more than one party, as appears, had accepted 
his friend Maurice while Sterling was in England : 

e To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London. 

' Floirac, August 7, 1837. 

* My dear Mother, — I am now beginning to feel 
( a little less dizzy and tired, and will try to write you 
( a few lines to tell you of my for times.' 

( I found my things all right at the Albion. Un- 
' luckily the steamer could not start from Brighton, 
' and I was obliged to go over to Shoreham ; but the 



186 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' weather cleared up, and we had rather a smooth pas- 
( sage into France. The wind was off the French coast, 
' so that we were in calm water at last. We got in 
f ahout ten o'clock; — too late for the Custom-house. 
' Next morning I settled all my business early ; but was 
' detained for horses till nine, — owing to the nearness 
' of the Duke of Orleans, which had caused a great stir 
' on the roads. I was for the same reason stopped at 
1 Rouen ; and I was once again stopped, on Saturday 
' for an hour, waiting for horses : otherwise I travelled 
■ without any delay, and in the finest weather, from 
( Dieppe to this place, which I reached on Sunday morn- 
i ing at five. I took the shortest road, by Alencon, 
( Saumur and Niort ; and was very well satisfied with 
' my progress, — at least, till about Blaye, on the Ga- 

* ronne, where there was a good deal of deep sand, 
' which, instead of running merrily through the hour- 
' glass of Time, on the contrary clogged the wheels of 
6 my carriage. At last, however, I reached home ; and 
( found everybody well, and glad to see me. — I felt 

■ tired and stupid, and not at all disposed to write. But 
' I am now sorry I did not overcome my laziness, and 

* send you a line to announce my safe arrival ; for I 
f know that at a distance people naturally grow anxious, 
' even without any reason.' 

' It seems now almost like a dream, that I have ever 
' been away from hence. But Annie's engagement to 
' Maurice is, I trust, a lasting memorial of my journey. 
' I find Susan quite as much pleased as I expected with 
( her Sister's prospects ; and satisfied that nothing could 
' have so well secured her happiness, and mental (or 
' rather cordial) advancement as her union to such a 
' man. On the whole, it is a great happiness to me 



Chap. IV. TO BORDEAUX. 187 

{ to look back both to this matter, and on the kindness 
' and affection of the relatives and friends whom I saw 
( in England. It will be a very painful disappointment 
6 to me if I should be obliged to pass the next summer 
i without taking my Wife and Children to our own 
' country : — we will, at all events, enjoy the hope of 
' my doing so. In the meantime I trust you will enjoy 
' your Tour, and on your return spend a quiet and 
e cheerful winter. Love to my Father, and kindest re- 
*' gards to Mrs, Carlyle. — Your affectionate son, 

( John Sterling.' 



CHAPTER V. 

TO MADEIRA. 

Sterling's dubieties as to continuing at Bordeaux 
were quickly decided. The cholera in France, the 
cholera in Nice, the — In fact his moorings were now 
loose ; and having been fairly at sea, he never could 
anchor himself here again. Yery shortly after this Let- 
ter, he left Belsito again (for good, as it proved) ; and 
returned to England with his household, there to con- 
sider what should next be done. 

On my return from Scotland, that year, perhaps late 
in September, I remember finding him lodged straitly 
but cheerfully, and in happy humour, in a little cottage 
on Blackheath ; whither his Father one day persuaded 
me to drive out with him for dinner. Our welcome, I 
can still recollect, was conspicuously cordial ; the place 
of dinner a kind of upper room, half-garret and full of 
books, which seemed to be John's place of study. From 
a shelf, I remember also, the good soul took down a 
book modestly enough bound in three volumes, lettered 
on the back Carlyles French Revolution, which had 
been published lately ; this he with friendly banter 
bade me look at as a first symptom, small but signifi- 
cant, that the book was not to die all at once. " One 
" copy of it at least might hope to last the date of 



: 



Chap. V. TO MADEIRA. 189 

" sheep-leather," I admitted, — and in my then mood 
the little fact was welcome. Our dinner, frank and 
happy on the part of Sterling, was peppered with abun- 
dant jolly satire from his Father : before tea, I took 
myself away ; towards Woolwich, I remember, where 
probably there was another call to make, and passage 
homeward by steamer : Sterling strode along with me 
a good bit of road in the bright sunny evening, full of 
lively friendly talk, and altogether kind and amiable ; 
and beautifully sympathetic with the loads he thought 
he saw on me, forgetful of his own. We shook hands 
on the road near the foot of Shooter's Hill : — at which 
point dim oblivious clouds rush down ; and of small or 
great I remember nothing more in my history or his for 
some time. 

Besides running much about among friends, and 
holding counsels for the management- of the coming 
winter, Sterling was now considerably occupied with 
Literature again ; and indeed may be said to have al- 
ready definitely taken it up as the one practical pursuit 
left for him. Some correspondence with Blackwood's 
Magazine was opening itself, under promising omens : 
now, and more and more henceforth, he began to look 
on Literature as his real employment after all ; and 
was prosecuting it with his accustomed loyalty and 
ardour. And he continued ever afterwards, in spite of 
such fitful circumstances and uncertain outward fluctua- 
tions as his were sure of being, to prosecute it steadily 
with all the strength he had. 

One evening about this time, he came down to us, 
to Chelsea, most likely by appointment and with stipu- 
lation for privacy ; and read, for our opinion, his Poem 
of the Sextons Daughter, which we now first heard of. 



190 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

The judgment in this house was friendly, but not the 
most encouraging. We found the piece monotonous, 
cast in the mould of Wordsworth, deficient in real 
human fervour or depth of melody, dallying on the 
borders of the infantile and "goody-good;" — in fact, 
involved still in the shadows of the surplice, and in- 
culcating (on hearsay mainly) a weak morality, which 
he would one day find not to be moral at all, but in 
good part maudlin-hypocritical and immoral. As in- 
deed was to be said still of most of his performances, 
especially the poetical ; a sickly shadow of the parish- 
church still hanging over them, which he could by no 
means recognise for sickly. Imprimatur nevertheless 
was the concluding word, — with these grave abatements, 
and rhadamanthine admonitions. To all which Ster- 
ling listened seriously and in the mildest humour. His 
reading, it might have been added, had much hurt the 
effect of the piece : a dreary pulpit or even conventicle 
manner ; that flattest moaning hoo-hoo of predeter- 
mined pathos, with a kind of rocking canter introduced 
by way of intonation, each stanza the exact fellow of 
the other, and the dull swing of the rocking-horse duly 
in each; — no reading could be more unfavourable to 
Sterling's poetry than his own. Such a mode of read- 
ing, and indeed generally in a man of such vivacity the 
total absence of all gifts for playacting or artistic mimi- 
cry in any kind, was a noticeable point. 

After much consultation, it was settled at last that 
Sterling should go to Madeira for the winter. One 
grey dull autumn afternoon, towards the middle of 
October, I remember walking with him to the eastern 
Dock region, to see his ship, and how the final prepara- 



Chap. V. TO MADEIRA. 191 

tions in his own little cabin were proceeding there. A 
dingy little ship, the deck crowded with packages, and 
bustling sailors within eight-and-forty hours of lifting 
anchor ; a dingy chill smoky day, as I have said withal, 
and a chaotic element and outlook, enough to make a 
friend's heart sad. I admired the cheerful careless hu- 
mour and brisk activity of Sterling, who took the mat- 
ter all on the sunny side, as he was wont in such cases. 
We came home together in manifold talk : he accepted 
with the due smile my last contribution to his sea- 
equipment, a sixpenny box of German lucifers pur- 
chased on the sudden in St. James's Street, fit to be 
offered with laughter or with tears or with both; he 
was to leave for Portsmouth almost immediately, and 
there go on board. Our next news was of his safe 
arrival in the temperate Isle. Mrs. Sterling and the 
children were left at Knightsbridge ; to pass this win- 
ter with his Father and Mother. 

At Madeira Sterling did well ; improved in health ; 
was busy with much Literature ; and fell in with so- 
ciety which he could reckon pleasant. He was much 
delighted with the scenery of the place ; found the cli- 
mate wholesome to him in a marked degree ; and, with 
good news from home, and kindly interests here abroad, 
passed no disagreeable winter in that exile. There 
was talking, there was writing, there was hope of better 
health ; he rode almost daily, in cheerful busy humour, 
along those fringed shore-roads : — beautiful leafy roads 
and horse-paths ; with here and there a wild cataract 
and bridge to look at; and always with the soft sky 
overhead, the dead volcanic mountain on one hand, and 
broad illimitable sea spread out on the other. Here 



192 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

are two Letters which give reasonably good account 
of him : 

c To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London, 

' Funchal, Madeira, November 16, 1837. 

' My dear Carlyle, — I have been writing a good 
' many letters all in a batch, to go by the same op- 
' portumty ; and I am thoroughly weary of writing the 
6 same things over and over again to different people. 
' My letter to you therefore, I fear, must have much of 
1 the character of remainder biscuit. But you will re- 
' ceive it as a proof that I do not wish you to forget me, 
' though it may be useless for any other purpose. 

( 1 reached this on the 2d, after a tolerably prosper- 

* ous voyage, deformed by some days of sea-sickness, 

* but otherwise not to be complained of. I liked my 
' twenty fellow-passengers far better than I expected ; 
' — three or four of them I liked much, and continue 
' to see frequently. The Island too is better than I 
' expected : so that my Barataria at least 1 does not dis- 
' appoint me. The bold rough mountains, with mist 
1 about their summits, verdure below, and a bright sun 
1 over all, please me much ; and I ride daily on the steep 
' and narrow paved roads, which no wheels ever jour- 
' neyed on. The Town is clean, and there its merits 
f end : but I am comfortably lodged ; with a large and 
' pleasant sitting-room to myself. I have met with 
e much kindness ; and see all the society I want, — 
' though it is not quite equal to that of London, even 
i excluding Chelsea. 

' I have got about me what Books I brought out; 
' and have read a little, and done some writing for Black- 






Chap. V. TO MADEIRA. 193 

' wood, — all, I have the pleasure to inform you, prose, 
' nay extremely prose. I shall now be more at leisure ; 
c and hope to get more steadily to work ; though I do 
' not know what I shall begin upon. As to reading, I 
{ have been looking at Goethe, especially the Life, — 
( much as a shying horse looks at a post. In truth, I 
( am afraid of him. I enjoy and admire him so much, 
' and feel I could so easily be tempted to go along with 
1 him. And yet I have a deeply-rooted and old persua- 
{ sion that he was the most splendid of anachronisms. 

* A thoroughly, nay intensely Pagan Life, in an age 
' when it is men's duty to be Christian. I therefore 

* never take him up without a kind of inward check, as 

* if I were trying some forbidden spell ; while, on the 
( other hand, there is so infinitely much to be learnt 
' from him, and it is so needful to understand the world 

* we live in, and our own age, and especially its greatest 
( minds, that I cannot bring myself to burn my books 
' as the converted Magicians did, or sink them as did 

* Prospero. There must, as I think, have been some 
1 prodigious defect in his mind, to let him hold such 

* views as his about women and some other things ; and 
' in another respect, I find so much coldness and hol- 
{ lowness as to the highest truths, and feel so strongly 
' that the Heaven he looks up to is but a vault of ice, 
' — that these two indications, leading to the same con- 
1 elusion, go far to convince me he was a profoundly 
1 immoral and irreligious spirit, with as rare faculties 
' of intelligence as ever belonged to any one. All this 

* may be mere goody weakness and twaddle, on my part : 
' but it is a persuasion that I cannot escape from ; 

* though I should feel the doing so to be a deliverance 
1 from a most painful load. If you could help me, I 

o 



194 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' heartily wish you would. I never take him up with- 
\ out high admiration, or lay him down without real 
' sorrow for what he chose to be. 

f I have been reading nothing else that you would 
' much care for. Southey's Amadis has amused me ; 

* and Ly ell's Geology interested me. The latter gives 
' one the same sort of bewildering view of the abysmal 
I extent of Time that Astronomy does of Space. I 
■ do not think I shall take your advice as to learning 
' Portuguese. It is said to be very ill spoken here ; 

* and assuredly it is the most direful series of nasal 

* twangs I ever heard. One gets on quite well with 
1 English. 

( The people here are, I believe, in a very low con- 
? dition ; but they do not appear miserable. I am told 

* that the influence of the priests makes the peasantry 
1 all Miguelites ; but it is said that nobody wants any 
' more revolutions. There is no appearance of riot or 
f crime ; and they are all extremely civil. I was much 
1 interested by learning that Columbus once lived here, 
' before he found America and fame. I have been to 
' see a deserted quinta (country-house), where there is 
' a great deal of curious old sculpture, in relief, upon 
1 the masonry ; many of the figures, which are nearly as 
1 large as life, representing soldiers clad and armed much 
' as I should suppose those of Cortez were. There are 
' no buildings about the Town, of the smallest preten- 
' sions to beauty or charm of any kind. On the whole, 
* if Madeira were one's world, life would certainly ra- 
e ther tend to stagnate ; but as a temporary refuge, a 
1 niche in an old ruin where one is sheltered from the 
i shower, it has great merit. I am more comfortable 
' and contented than I expected to be, so far from home 



Chap. V. TO MADEIRA. 195 

' and from everybody I am closely connected with : but, 
1 of course, it is at best a tolerable exile. 

1 Tell Mrs. Carlyle that I have written, since I have 
1 been here, and am going to send to Blackwood, a 
' humble imitation of her Watch and Canary-Bird, en- 
e titled The Suit of Armour and the Skeleton.* I am 
' conscious that I am far from having reached the depth 
' and fulness of despair and mockery which distinguish 
1 the original ! B ut in truth there is a lightness of tone 
* about her style, which I hold to be invaluable : where 
' she makes hairstrokes, I make blotches. I have a ve- 
i hement suspicion that my Dialogue is an entire failure ; 
( but I cannot be plagued with it any longer. Tell her 
' I will not send her messages, but will write to her 
' soon. — Meanwhile I am affectionately hers and yours, 

' John Sterling.' 

The next is to his Brother-in-law ; and in a still 
hopefuller tone : 

1 To Charles Barton, Bsq.-f 

' Funchal, Madeira, March 3, 1838. 

' My dear Charles, — I have often been thinking 
of you and your whereabouts in Germany, and wish- 
ing I knew more about you ; and at last it occurred to 
me that you might perhaps have the same wish about 
me, and that therefore I should do well to write to 
you. 

* I have been here exactly four months, having ar- 
rived on the 2d of November, — my wedding-day ; and 

* Came out, as will soon appear, in Blackwood (February, 1838). 
f ' Hotel de PEurope, Berlin,' added in Mrs. Sterling's hand. 



196 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' though you perhaps may not think it a compliment to 
' Susan, I have seldom passed four months more cheer- 

* fully and agreeably. I have of course felt my absence 
' from my family, and missed the society of my friends ; 
' for there is not a person here whom I knew before I 
6 left England. But, on the whole, I have been in good 
' health, and actively employed. I have a good many 
' agreeable and valuable acquaintances, one or two of 
' whom I hope I may hereafter reckon as friends. The 
' weather has generally been fine, and never cold ; and 
1 the scenery of the Island is of a beauty which you un- 
1 happy Northern people can have little conception of. 

1 It consists of a great mass of volcanic mountains, 
' covered in their lower parts with cottages, vines and 
1 patches of vegetables. When you pass through, or 

* over the central ridge, and get towards the North, 

* there are woods of trees, of the laurel kind, covering 
{ the wild steep slopes, and forming some of the strang- 
' est and most beautiful prospects I have ever seen. 
' Towards the interior, the forms of the hills become 
' more abrupt, and loftier ; and give the notion of very 
' recent volcanic disturbances, though in fact there has 
' been nothing of the kind since the discovery of the 
' Island by Europeans. Among these mountains, the 
1 dark deep precipices, and narrow ravines with small 
1 streams at the bottom ; the basaltic knobs and ridges 
' on the summits ; and the perpetual play of mist and 
' cloud around them, under this bright sun and clear 
' sky, — form landscapes which you would thoroughly 
1 enjoy, and which I much wish I could give you a 
' notion of. The Town is on the south, and of course 
' the sheltered side of the Island ; perfectly protected 
' from the North and East ; although we have seen 




Chap. V. TO MADEIRA. 197 

( sometimes patches of bright snow on the dark peaks 
' in the distance. It is a neat cheerful place ; all built 
' of grey stone, but having many of the houses coloured 
' white or red. There is not a really handsome build- 
' ing in it, but there is a general aspect of comfort and 
' solidity. The shops are very poor. The English do 
1 not mix at all with the Portuguese. The Bay is a 
' very bad anchorage ; but is wide, bright and cheerful ; 
( and there are some picturesque points, — one a small 
( black island, — scattered about it. 

* I lived till a fortnight ago in lodgings, having two 
' rooms, one a very good one ; and paying for every- 
( thing fifty-six dollars a month, the dollar being four 
' shillings and twopence. This you will see is dear ; 
' but I could make no better arrangement, for there is 

* an unusual affluence of strangers this year. I have 
( now come to live with a friend, a Dr. Calvert, in a 

* small house of our own, where I am much more com- 

* fortable, and live greatly cheaper. He is a friend of 
' Mrs. Percival's ; about my age, an Oriel man, and a 
( very superior person. I think the chances are, we 
' shall go home together.' * * * ' I cannot tell you 
' of all the other people I have become familiar with ; 
' and shall only mention in addition Bingham Baring, 
( eldest son of Lord Ashburton, who was here for some 
' weeks on account of a dying brother, and whom I saw 

* a great deal of. He is a pleasant, very good-natured 
' and rather clever man ; Conservative Member for 
' North Staffordshire. 

* During the first two months I was here, I rode a 
6 great deal about the Island, having a horse regularly ; 
' and was much in agreeable company, seeing a great 

* deal of beautiful scenery. Since then, the weather has 



198 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

f been much more unsettled, though not cold ; and I 
( have gone about less, as I cannot risk the being wet. 
c But I have spent my time pleasantly, reading and 
' writing. I have written a good many things for Black- 
c wood ; one of which, the Armour and the Skeleton, 
' I see, is printed in the February Number. I have 
e just sent them a long Tale, called the Onyx Ring, 
e which cost me a good deal of trouble ; and the extra- 
( vagance of which, I think, would amuse you ; but its 
1 length may prevent its appearance in Blackwood, If 
( so, I think I should make a volume of it. I have also 
i written some poems ; and shall probably publish the 
i Sextons Daughter when I return. 

( My health goes on most favourably. I have had 
' no attack of the chest this spring ; which has not hap- 
' pened to me since the spring before we went to Bonn ; 
' and I am told, if I take care, I may roll along for 
f years. But I have little hope of being allowed to 
' spend the four first months of any year in England ; 
1 and the question will be, Whether to go at once to 
1 Italy, by way of Germany and Switzerland, with my 
1 family, or to settle with them in England, perhaps at 
1 Hastings, and go abroad myself when it may be neces- 
' sary. I cannot decide till I return ; but I think the 
' latter the most probable. 

' To my dear Charles I do not like to use the 
' ordinary forms of ending a letter, for they are very 
1 inadequate to express my sense of your long and most 
6 unvarying kindness ; but be assured no one living 
e could say with more sincerity that he is ever affec- 
i tionately yours, 

' John Sterling.' 









Chap. V. TO MADEIRA. 199 

Other Letters give occasionally views of the shadier 
side of things : dark broken weather, in the sky and 
in the mind; ugly clouds covering one's poor fitful 
transitory prospect, for a time, as they might well 
do in Sterling's case. Meanwhile we perceive his 
literary business is fast developing itself; amid all 
his confusions, he is never idle long. Some of his 
best Pieces, — the Onyx Ring, for one, as we perceive, 
— were written here this winter. Out of the turbid 
whirlpool of the days he strives assiduously to snatch 
what he can. 

Sterling's communications with Blackwood's Maga- 
zine had now issued in some open sanction of him by 
Professor Wilson, the distinguished presiding spirit of 
that Periodical ; a fact naturally of high importance 
to him under the literary point of view. For Wilson, 
with his clear flashing eye and great genial heart, had 
at once recognised Sterling ; and lavished stormily, in 
his wild generous way, torrents of praise on him in the 
editorial comments : which undoubtedly was one of the 
gratefullest literary baptisms, by fire or by water, that 
could befal a soul like Sterling's. He bore it very 
gently, being indeed past the age to have his head 
turned by anybody's praises ; nor do I think the exag- 
geration that was in these eulogies did him any ill what- 
ever; while surely their generous encouragement did 
him much good, in his solitary struggle towards new 
activity under such impediments as his. Laudari a 
laudato ; to be called noble by one whom you and the 
world recognise as noble : this great satisfaction, never 
perhaps in such a degree before or after, had now been 
vouchsafed to Sterling ; and was, as I compute, an im- 



200 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

portant fact for him. He proceeded on his pilgrimage 
with new energy, and felt more and more as if authen- 
tically consecrated to the same. 

The Onyx Ring, sl curious Tale, with wild impro- 
bable basis, but with a noble glow of colouring and 
with other high merits in it, a Tale still worth read- 
ing, in which, among the imaginary characters, various 
friends of Sterling's are shadowed forth, not always in 
the truest manner, came out in Blackwood in the winter 
of this year. Surely a very high talent for painting, 
both of scenery and persons, is visible in this Fiction ; 
the promise of a Novel such as we have few. But 
there wants maturing, wants purifying of clear from 
unclear ; — properly there want patience and steady 
depth. The basis, as we said, is wild and loose ; and 
in the details, lucent often with fine colour, and dipt 
in beautiful sunshine, there are several things misseen, 
untrue, which is the worst species of mispainting. Wit- 
ness, as Sterling himself would have by and by admit- 
ted, the l empty clockcase' (so we called it) which he 
has labelled Goethe, — which puts all other untruths in 
the Piece to silence. 

One of the great alleviations of his exile at Madeira 
he has already celebrated to us : the pleasant circle of 
society he fell into there. Great luck, thinks Sterling, 
in this voyage ; as indeed there was : but he himself, 
moreover, was readier than most men to fall into plea- 
sant circles everywhere, being singularly prompt to 
make the most of any circle. Some of his Madeira 
acquaintanceships were really good ; and one of them, 
if not more, ripened into comradeship and friendship 



Chap. V. TO MADEIRA. 201 

for him. He says, as we saw, * The chances are, Calvert 
and I will come together.' 

Among the English in pursuit of health, or in flight 
from fatal disease, that winter, was this Dr. Calvert ; 
an excellent ingenious cheery Cumberland gentleman, 
about Sterling's age, and in a deeper stage of ailment, 
this not being his first visit to Madeira : he, warmly 
joining himself to Sterling, as we have seen, was warmly 
received by him ; so that there soon grew a close and 
free intimacy between them ; which for the next three 
years, till poor Calvert ended his course, was a leading 
element in the history of both. Companionship in in- 
curable malady, a touching bond of union, was by no 
means purely or chiefly a companionship in misery in 
their case. The sunniest inextinguishable cheerfulness 
shone, through all manner of clouds, in both. Calvert 
had been travelling physician in some family of rank, 
who had rewarded him with a pension, shielding his own 
ill health from one sad evil. Being hopelessly gone in 
pulmonary disorder, he now moved about among friendly 
climates and places, seeking what alleviation there might 
be ; often spending his summers in the house of a sister 
in the environs of London ; an insatiable rider on his little 
brown pony ; always, wherever you might meet him, one 
of the cheeriest of men. He had plenty of speculation 
too, clear glances of all kinds into religious, social, mo- 
ral concerns ; and pleasantly incited Sterling's outpour- 
ings on such subjects. He could report of fashionable 
persons and manners, in a fine human Cumberland man- 
ner ; loved art, a great collector of drawings ; he had 
endless help and ingenuity ; and was in short every way a 
very human, lovable, good and nimble man, — the laugh- 



202 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

ing blue eyes of him, the clear cheery soul of him, still 
redolent of the fresh Northern breezes and transparent 
Mountain streams. With this Calvert, Sterling formed 
a natural intimacy ; and they were to each other a great 
possession, mutually enlivening many a dark day during 
the next three years. They did come home together 
this spring ; and subsequently made several of these 
health-journeys in partnership. 



CHAPTER VI. 

LITERATURE : THE STERLING CLUB. 

In spite of these wanderings, Sterling's course in life, 
so far as his poor life could have any course or aim 
beyond that of screening itself from swift death, was 
getting more and more clear to him ; and he pursued 
it diligently, in the only way permitted him, by hasty 
snatches, in the intervals of continual fluctuation, change 
of place and other interruption. 

Such, once for all, were the conditions appointed 
him. And it must be owned he had, with a most kindly 
temper, adjusted himself to these ; nay you would have 
said, he loved them ; it was almost as if he would have 
chosen them as the suitablest. Such an adaptation was 
there in him of volition to necessity : — for indeed they 
both, if well seen into, proceeded from one source. 
Sterling's bodily disease was the expression, under phy- 
sical conditions, of the too vehement life which, under 
the moral, the intellectual and other aspects, inces- 
santly struggled within him. Too vehement; — which 
would have required a frame of oak and iron to contain 
it : in a thin though most wiry body of flesh and bone, 
it incessantly ' wore holes,' and so found outlet for it- 
self. He could take no rest, he had never learned that 
art ; he was, as we often reproached him, fatally incapa- 
ble of sitting still. Rapidity, as of pulsing auroras, as 
of dancing lightnings ; rapidity in all forms characterised 
him. This, which was his bane, in many senses, being 



204 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

the real origin of his disorder, and of such continual 
necessity to move and change, — was also his antidote, 
so far as antidote there might be ; enabling him to love 
change, and to snatch, as few others could have done, 
from the w T aste chaotic years, all tumbled into ruin by 
incessant change, what hours and minutes of available 
turned up. He had an incredible facility of labour. 
He flashed with most piercing glance into a subject; 
gathered it up into organic utterability, with truly won- 
derful despatch, considering the success and truth at- 
tained ; and threw it on paper with a swift felicity, 
ingenuity, brilliancy and general excellence, of which, 
under such conditions of swiftness, I have never seen 
a parallel. Essentially an improviser genius ; as his 
Father too was, and of admirable completeness he too, 
though under a very different form. 

If Sterling has done little in Literature, we may 
ask, What other man than he, in such circumstances, 
could have done anything ? In virtue of these rapid 
faculties, which otherwise cost him so dear, he has built 
together, out of those wavering boiling quicksands of 
his few later years,, a result which may justly surprise 
us. There is actually some result in those poor Two 
Volumes gathered from him, such as they are ; he that 
reads there will not wholly lose his time, nor rise with 
a malison instead of a blessing on the writer. Here 
actually is a real seer-glance, of some compass, into 
the world of our day ; blessed glance, once more, of 
an eye that is human; truer than one of a thousand, 
and beautifully capable of making others see with it. I 
have known considerable temporary reputations gained, 
considerable piles of temporary guineas, with loud re- 
viewing and the like to match, on a far less basis than 



Chap. VI. THE STERLING CLUB. 205 

lies in those two volumes. Those also, I expect, will 
be held in memory by the world, one way or other, 
till the world has extracted all its benefit Trom them. 
Graceful, ingenious and illuminative reading, of their 
sort, for all manner of inquiring souls. A little ver- 
dant flowery island of poetic intellect, of melodious 
human verity ; sunlit island founded on the rocks ; — 
which the enormous circumambient continents of mown 
reedgrass and floating lumber, with their mountain- 
ranges of ejected stable-litter however alpine, cannot 
by any means or chance submerge : nay, I expect, they 
will not even quite hide it, this modest little island, 
from the well-discerning ; but will float past it towards 
the place appointed for them, and leave said island 
standing. Allah kereem, say the Arabs ! And of the 
English also some still know that there is a difference 
in the material of mountains ! — 

As it is this last little result, the amount of his poor 
and ever-interrupted literary labour, that henceforth 
forms the essential history of Sterling, we need not 
dwell at too much length on the foreign journeys, disan- 
chorings, and nomadic vicissitudes of household, which 
occupy his few remaining years, and which are only the 
disastrous and accidental arena of this. He had now, 
excluding his early and more deliberate residence in the 
West Indies, made two flights abroad, once with his 
family, once without, in search of health. He had 
two more, in rapid succession, to make, and many 
more to meditate ; and in the whole from Bayswater to 
the end, his family made no fewer than five complete 
changes of abode, for his sake. But these cannot be 
accepted as in any sense epochs in his life : the one last 



206 JOHN STERLING. Part II, 

epoch of his life was that of his internal change towards 
Literature as his work in the world ; and we need not 
linger much on these, which are the mere outer acci- 
dents of that, and had no distinguished influence in 
modifying that. 

Friends still hoped the unrest of that brilliant too- 
rapid soul would abate with years. Nay the doctors 
sometimes promised, on the physical side, a like result ; 
prophesying that, at forty-five or some mature age, the 
stress of disease might quit the lungs, and direct itself 
to other quarters of the system. But no such result 
was appointed for us : neither forty-five itself, nor the 
ameliorations promised then, were ever to be reached. 
Four voyages abroad, three of them without his family, 
in flight from death ; and at home, for a like reason, 
five complete shiftings of abode : in such wandering 
manner, and not otherwise, had Sterling to continue his 
pilgrimage till it ended. 

Once more I must say, his cheerfulness throughout 
was wonderful. A certain grimmer shade, coming gra- 
dually over him, might perhaps be noticed in the con- 
cluding years; not impatience properly, yet the con- 
sciousness how much he needed patience ; something 
more caustic in his tone of wit, more trenchant and in- 
dignant occasionally in his tone of speech : but at no 
moment was his activity bewildered or abated, nor did 
his composure ever give way. No ; both his activity 
and his composure he bore with him, through all wea- 
thers, to the final close ; and on the whole, right man- 
fully he walked his wild stern way towards the goal, 
and like a Roman wrapt his mantle round him when he 
fell. — Let us glance, with brevity, at what he said and 
suffered in his remaining pilgrimings and changings; 



Chap. VI. THE STERLING CLUB. 207 

and count up what fractions of spiritual fruit he realised 
to us from them. 

Calvert and he returned from Madeira in spring 1838. 
Mrs. Sterling and the family had lived in Knights- 
bridge with his Father's people through winter : they 
now changed to Blackheath, or ultimately Hastings, and 
he with them, coming up to London pretty often ; un- 
certain what was to be done for next winter. Literature 
went on briskly here : Blackwood had from him, besides 
the Onyx Ring which soon came out with due honour, 
assiduous almost monthly contributions in prose and 
verse. The series called Hymns of a Hermit was now 
going on ; eloquent melodies, tainted to me with some- 
thing of the same disease as the Sextons Daughter, 
though perhaps in a less degree, considering that the 
strain was in a so much higher pitch. Still better, in 
clear eloquent prose, the series of detached thoughts en- 
titled Crystals from a Cavern; of which the set of frag- 
ments, generally a little larger in compass, called Thoughts 
and Images, and again those called Sayings and Assay- 
ings * are properly continuations. Add to which, his 
friend John Mill had now charge of a Review, The Lon- 
don and Westminster its name ; wherein Sterling's assist- 
ance, ardently desired, was freely afforded, with satisfac- 
tion to both parties, in this and the following years. An 
Essay on Montaigne, with the notes and reminiscences 
already spoken of, was Sterling's first contribution here ; 
then one on Simonides ;f both of the present season. 

On these and other businesses, slight or important, 
he was often running up to London ; and gave us al- 
most the feeling of his being resident among us. In 
* Hare, ii. 95-167. t lb. i. 129, 188. 



208 



JOHN STERLING. 



Part II. 



order to meet the most or a good many of his friends 
at once on such occasions, he now furthermore con- 
trived the scheme of a little Club, where monthly over 
a frugal dinner some reunion might take place ; that is, 
where friends of his, and withal such friends of theirs as 
suited, — and in fine, where a small select company de- 
finable as persons to whom it was pleasant to talk toge- 
ther, — might have a little opportunity of talking. The 
scheme was approved by the persons concerned : I have 
a copy of the Original Regulations, probably drawn up 
by Sterling, a very solid lucid piece of economics ; and 
the List of the proposed Members, signed ( James Sped- 
ding, Secretary,' and dated '8 August, 1838.'* The 



* Here in a Note they are, if 
The marks of interrogation, attached 
or otherwise questionable, are in the 

J. D. Acland, Esq. 

Hon. W. B. Baring. 

Rev. J. W. Blakesley. 

W. Boxall, Esq. 

T. Carlyle, Esq. 

Hon. R. Cavendish (?) 

H. N. Coleridge, Esq. (?) 

J. W. Colville, Esq. 

Allan Cunningham, Esq. (?) 

Rev. H. Donn. 

F. H. Doyle, Esq. 

C. L. Eastlake, Esq. 
Alex. Ellice, Esq. 

J. F. Elliot, Esq. 
Copley Fielding, Esq. 
Rev. J. C. Hare. 
Sir Edmund Head (?) 

D. D. Heath, Esq 

G. C. Lewis, Esq. 

H. L. Lushington, Esq. 
The Lord Lyttleton. 
C. Macarthy, Esq 



they can be important to anybody, 
to some Names as not yet consulted 
Secretary's hand : 

H. Maiden, Esq. 

J. S. Mill, Esq. 

R. M. Milnes, Esq. 

R. Monteith, Esq. 

S. A. O'Brien, Esq. 

Sir F. Palgrave (?) 

W. F. Pollok, Esq. 

Philip Pusey, Esq. 

A. Rio, Esq. 

C. Romilly, Esq. 

James Spedding, Esq. 

Rev. John Sterling. 

Alfred Tennyson, Esq. 

Rev. Connop Thirlwall. 

Rev. W. Hepworth Thompson. 

Edward Twistleton, Esq. 

G. S. Venables, Esq. 

Samuel Wood, Esq. 

Rev. T. Worsley. 



James Spedding, Secretary. 
August 8, 1838. 



Chap. VI. THE STERLING CLUB. 209 

Club grew; was at first called the Anonymous Club; 
then, after some months of success, in compliment to the 
founder who had now left us again, the Sterling Club ; 
— under which latter name, it once lately, for a time, 
owing to the Religious Newspapers, became rather fa- 
mous in the world ! In which strange circumstances the 
name was again altered, to suit weak brethren ; and the 
Club still subsists, in a sufficiently flourishing though 
happily once more a private condition. That is the 
origin and genesis of poor Sterling's Club ; which, hav- 
ing honestly paid the shot for itself at Will's Coffeehouse 
or elsewhere, rashly fancied its bits of affairs were quite 
settled ; and once little thought of getting into Books of 
History with them ! — 

But now, Autumn approaching, Sterling had to quit 
Clubs, for matters of sadder consideration. A new re- 
moval, what we call ' his third peregrinity,' had to be 
decided on ; and it was resolved that Rome should be 
the goal of it, the journey to be done in company with 
Calvert, whom also the Italian climate might be made 
to serve instead of Madeira. One of the liveliest recol- 
lections I have, connected with the Anonymous Club, is 
that of once escorting Sterling, after a certain meeting 
there, which I had seen only towards the end, and now 
remember nothing of, — except that, on breaking up, 
he proved to be encumbered with a carpetbag, and 
could not at once find a cab for Knightsbridge. Some 
small bantering hereupon, during the instants of em- 
bargo. But we carried his carpetbag, slinging it on my 
stick, two or three of us alternately, through dusty vacant 
streets, under the gaslights and the stars, towards the 
surest cabstand ; still jesting, or pretending to jest, he 

p 



210 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

and we, not in the mirthfullest manner; and had (I 
suppose) our own feelings about the poor Pilgrim, who 
was to go on the morrow, and had hurried to meet us 
in this way, as the last thing before leaving England. 






CHAPTER VII. 

ITALY. 

The journey to Italy was undertaken by advice of Sir 
James Clark, reckoned the chief authority in pulmonary 
therapeutics ; who prophesied important improvements 
from it, and perhaps even the possibility henceforth of 
living all the year in some English home. Mrs. Ster- 
ling and the children continued in a house avowedly 
temporary, a furnished house at Hastings, through the 
winter. The two friends had set ofFfor Belgium, while 
the due warmth was still in the air. They traversed 
Belgium, looking well at pictures and such objects; 
ascended the Rhine ; rapidly traversed Switzerland and 
the Alps ; issuing upon Italy and Milan, with immense 
appetite for pictures, and time still to gratify them- 
selves in that pursuit, and be deliberate in their ap- 
proach to Rome. We will take this free-flowing sketch 
of their passage over the Alps ; written amid ' the rocks 
of Arona,' — Santo Borromeo's country, and poor little 
Mignon's ! The ' elder Perdonnets ' are opulent Lau- 
sanne people, to whose late son Sterling had been very 
kind in Madeira the year before : 

' To Mrs. Sterling, Knightshridge, London. 

' Arona on the Lago Maggiore, Oct. 8th, 1838, 

1 My dear Mother, — I bring down the story of 
e my proceedings to the present time since the 29th of 



212 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

September. I think it must have been after that day 
that I was at a great breakfast at the elder Perdonnets', 
with whom I had declined to dine, not choosing to go 
out at night. * * * I was taken by my hostess to 
see several pretty pleasure-grounds and points of view 
in the neighbourhood ; and latterly Calvert was better, 
and able to go with us. He was in force again, and 
our passports were all settled so as to enable us to 
start on the morning of the 2d, after taking leave of 
our kind entertainer with thanks for her infinite kind- 
ness. 

f We reached St. Maurice early that evening ; hav- 
ing had the Dent du Midi close to us for several hours ; 
glittering like the top of a silver teapot, far up in the 
sky. Our course lay along the Valley of the Rhone ; 
which is considered one of the least beautiful parts of 
Switzerland, and perhaps for this reason pleased us, 
as we had not been prepared to expect much. We 
saw, before reaching the foot of the Alpine pass at 
Brieg, two rather celebrated Waterfalls ; the one the 
Pissevache, which has no more beauty than any water- 
fall one hundred or two hundred feet high must ne- 
cessarily have : the other near Tourtemagne is much 
more pleasing, having foliage round it, and being in a 
secluded dell. If you buy a Swiss Waterfall, choose 
this one. 

6 Our second day took us through Martigny to Sion, 
celebrated for its picturesque towers upon detached 
hills, for its strong Romanism and its population of 
cretins, — that is, maimed idiots, having the goitre. It 
looked to us a more thriving place than we expected. 
They are building a great deal ; among other things, 
a new Bishop's Palace and a new Nunnery, — to in- 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 213 

( habit either of which ex officio I feel myself very 
( unsuitable. From Sion we came to Brieg ; a little 
' village in a nook, close under an enormous mountain 
s and glacier, where it lies like a molehill, or something 
( smaller, at the foot of a haystack. Here also we slept ; 
' and the next day. our voiturier, who had brought us 
' from Lausanne, started with us up the' Simplon Pass ; 
f helped on by two extra horses. 

1 The beginning of the road was rather cheerful ; 
' having a good deal of green pasturage, and some raoun- 
{ tain villages ; but it soon becomes dreary and savage 
i in aspect, and but for our bright sky and warm air, 
{ would have been truly dismal. However, we gained 
' gradually a distinct and near view of several large 
' glaciers ; and reached at last the high and melancholy 

* valleys of the Upper Alps ; where even the pines be- 

* come scanty, and no sound is heard but the wheels 
1 of one's carriage, except when there happens to be a 
' storm or an avalanche, neither of which entertained 
s us. There is, here and there, a small stream of water 
' pouring from the snow ; but this is rather a monoton- 
( ous accompaniment to the general desolation than an 
' interruption of it. The road itself is certainly very 
( good, and impresses one with a strong notion of hu- 
( man power. But the common descriptions are much 
( exaggerated ; and many of what the Guide-Books call 
' " galleries" are merely parts of the road supported by 
( a wall built against the rock, and have nothing like a 
' roof above them. The "stupendous bridges," as they 
' are called, might be packed, a dozen together, into 
' one arch of London Bridge • and they are seldom even 
' very striking from the depth below. The roadway is 
' excellent, and kept in the best order. On the whole, 



21 4 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

1 I am very glad to have travelled the most famous road 
' in Europe, and to have had delightful weather for 
' doing so, as indeed we have had ever since we left 
1 Lausanne. The Italian descent is greatly more re- 

* markable than the other side. 

' We slept near the top, at the Village of Simplon, 
f in a very fair and well-warmed inn, close to a moun- 
( tain stream, which is one of the great ornaments of 

* this side of the road. We have here passed into a 
' region of granite, from that of limestone and what is 
1 called gneiss. The valleys are sharper and closer, — 
' like cracks in a hard and solid mass; — and there is 
1 much more of the startling contrast of light and shade, 
' as well as more angular boldness of outline ; to all 
( which the more abundant waters add a fresh and vi- 
1 vacious interest. Looking back through one of these 
' abysmal gorges, one sees two torrents dashing toge- 
f ther ; the precipice and ridge on one side, pitch-black 
1 with shade ; and that on the other all flaming gold ; 
1 while behind rises, in a huge cone, one of the glacier 
' summits of the chain. The stream at one's feet rushes 
1 at a leap some two hundred feet down, and is bordered 
1 with pines and beeches, struggling through a ruined 
i world of clefts and boulders. I never saw anything 
' so much resembling some of the Circles described by 
' Dante. From Simplon we made for Duomo d'Ossola ; 
' having broken out, as through the mouth of a mine, 
( into green and fertile valleys full of vines and chest- 
' nuts, and white villages, — in short, into sunshine and 
' Italy. 

* At this place we dismissed our Swiss voiturier, and 
' took an Italian one ; who conveyed us to Omegna on 
' the Lake of Orta ; a place little visited by English 



Chap. VIL ITALY. 215 

travellers, but which fully repaid us the trouble of 
going there. We were lodged in a simple and even 
rude Italian inn ; where they cannot speak a word of 
French ; where we occupied a barnlike room, with a 
huge chimney fit to lodge a hundred ghosts, whom 
we expelled by dint of a hot woodfire. There were 
two beds, and as'it happened good ones, in this strange 
old apartment ; which was adorned by pictures of 
Architecture, and by Heads of Saints, better than 
many at the Royal Academy Exhibition, and which 
one paid nothing for looking at. The thorough Ita- 
lian character of the whole scene amused us, much 
more than Meurice's at Paris would have done ; for 
we had voluble, commonplace good humour, with the 
aspect and accessories of a den of banditti. 

* Today we have seen the Lake of Orta, have walked 
for some miles among its vineyards and chestnuts ; and 
thence have come, by Baveno, to this place ; — having 
seen by the way, I believe, the most beautiful part of 
the Lago Maggiore, and certainly the most cheerful, 
complete and extended example of fine scenery I have 
ever fallen in with. Here we are, much to my won- 
der, — for it seems too good to be true, — fairly in Italy ; 
and as yet my journey has been a pleasanter and more 
instructive, and in point of health a more successful 
one, than I at all imagined possible. Calvert and I 
go on as well as can be. I let him have his way 
about natural science, and he only laughs benignly 
when he thinks me absurd in my moral speculations. 
My only regrets are caused by my separation from my 
family and friends, and by the hurry I have been liv- 
ing in, which has prevented me doing any work, — and 
compelled me to write to you at a good deal faster 



216 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' rate than the vapore moves on the Lago Maggiore. 
1 It will take me tomorrow to Sesto Calende, whence 
s we go to Varese. We shall not be at Milan for some 
' days. Write thither, if you are kind enough to write 
' at all, till I give you another address. Love to my 
' Father. — Your affectionate son, 

' John Sterling.' 

Omitting Milan, Florence nearly all, and much about 
' Art,' Michael Angelo, and other aerial matters, here 
are some select terrestrial glimpses, the fittest I can 
find, of his progress towards Rome : 

Lucca, Nov. 21th, 1838 (To his Mother).—'! had 
1 dreams, like other people, before I came here, of what 
e the Lombard Lakes must be ; and the week I spent 
f among them has left me an image, not only more dis- 
{ tinct, but far more warm, shining and various, and 
1 more deeply attractive in innumerable respects, than 
f all I had before conceived of them. And so also it 
f has been with Florence ; where I spent three weeks : 
1 enough for the first hazy radiant dawn of sympathy 
' to pass away ; yet constantly adding an increase of 
6 knowledge and of love, while I examined, and tried 
' to understand, the wonderful minds that have left be- 
' hind them there such abundant traces of their pre- 
' sence.' — l On Sunday, the day before I left Florence, 
1 I went to the highest part of the Grand Duke's Gar- 
' den of Boboli, which commands a view of most of the 
( City, and of the vale of the Arno to the westward ; 
1 where, as we had been visited by several rainy days, 
f and now at last had a very fine one, the whole pro- 
* spect was in its highest beauty. The mass of build- 
' ings, chiefly on the other side of the River, is suffi- 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 217 

' cient to fill the eye, without perplexing the mind by 
' vastness like that of London ; and its name and his- 

* tory, its outline and large and picturesque buildings, 

* give it grandeur of a higher order than that of mere 
' multitudinous extent. The Hills that border the Val- 
i ley of the Arno are also very pleasing and striking to 
1 look upon ; and the view of the rich Plain, glimmer- 
' ing away into blue distance, covered with an endless 
' web of villages and country-houses, is one of the most 
{ delightful images of human well-being I have ever 
' seen.' — 

' Very shortly before leaving Florence, I went 
' through the house of Michael Angelo ; which is still 
' possessed by persons of the same family, descendants, 
( I believe, of his Nephew. There is in it his " first 
f work in marble," as it is called ; and a few drawings, 
6 — all with the stamp of his enginery upon them, which 
( was more powerful than all the steam in London.' — 
f On the whole, though I have done no work in Florence 
1 that can be of any use or pleasure to others, except my 
' Letters to my Wife, — I leave it with the certainty of 

* much valuable knowledge gained there, and with a 
s most pleasant remembrance of the busy and thought- 

* ful days I owe to it. 

* We left Florence before seven yesterday morn- 
1 ing,' 26th November, i for this place ; travelling on 
i the northern side of the Arno, by Prato, Pistoia, 
' Pescia. We tried to see some old frescoes in a 

* Church at Prato ; but found the priests all about, 
{ saying mass ; and of course did not venture to put 
e our hands into a hive where the bees were buzzing 
' and on the wing. Pistoia we only coasted. A little 



218 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

( on one side of it, there is a Hill, the first on the 
' road from Florence ; which we walked up, and had 
' a very lively and brilliant prospect over the road we 
1 had just travelled, and the Town of Pistoia. Thence 
c to this place the whole land is beautiful, and in the 
' highest degree prosperous, — in short, to speak meta- 
' phorically, all dotted with Leghorn bonnets, and 
' streaming with olive-oil. The girls here are said to 
' employ themselves chiefly in platting straw, which is 
' a profitable employment ; and the slightness and quiet 
i of the work are said to be much more favourable to 
{ beauty than the coarser kinds of labour performed by 
i the countrywomen elsewhere. Certain it is that I 
' saw more pretty women in Pescia, in the hour I spent 
s there, than I ever before met with among the same 
' numbers of the " phare sect." Wherefore, as a me- 
1 morial of them, I bought there several Legends of 
i Female Saints and Martyrs, and of other Ladies quite 
' the reverse and held up as warnings ; all of which are 
e written in ottava rima, and sold for three-halfpence 
' apiece. But unhappily I have not yet had time to 
' read them. This Town has 30,000 inhabitants, and 
1 is surrounded by Walls, laid out as walks, and evi- 
' dently not at present intended to be besieged, — for 
' which reason, this morning, I merely walked on them 
1 round the Town, and did not besiege them.' 

' The Cathedral' of Lucca l contains some Relics; 
6 which have undoubtedly worked miracles on the ima- 
' gination of the people hereabouts. The Grandfather 
f of all Relics (as the Arabs would say) in the place is 
' the Volto Santo, which is a Face of the Saviour apper- 
' taining to a wooden Crucifix. Now you must know 
i that, after the ascension of Christ, Nicodemus was 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 219 

' ordered by an Angel to carve an image of him ; and 
' went accordingly with a hatchet, and cut down a ce- 
' dar for that purpose. He then proceeded to carve the 
1 figure ; and being tired, fell asleep before he had done 
' the face ; which however, on awaking, he found com- 
' pleted by celestial aid. This image was brought to 

* Lucca, from Leghorn I think, where it had arrived in 
' a ship, "more than a thousand years ago," and has 
' ever since been kept, in purple and fine linen and 
' gold and diamonds, quietly working miracles. I saw 
( the gilt Shrine of it; and also a Hatchet which re- 
' fused to cut off the head of an innocent man, who had 
f been condemned to death, and who prayed to the Volto 
' Santo. I suppose it is by way of economy (they being 
' a frugal people) that the Italians have their Book of 
' Common Prayer and their Arabian Nights' Entertain- 
' ments condensed into one.' 

Pisa, December 2d, 1838 (To the same). — ' Pisa is 
' very unfairly treated in all the Books I have read. 

* It seems to me a quiet, but very agreeable place ; 
1 with wide clean streets, and a look of stability and 
' comfort ; and I admire the Cathedral and its ap- 
' pendages more, the more I see them. The leaning of 
' the Tower is to my eye decidedly unpleasant ; but it 
1 is a beautiful building nevertheless, and the view from 
1 the top is, under a bright sky, remarkably lively and 
' satisfactory. The Lucchese Hills form a fine mass, and 
1 the sea must in clear weather be very distinct. There 
' was some haze over it when I was up, though the land 
' was all clear. I could just see the Leghorn Light- 
' house. Leghorn itself I shall not be able to visit.' — 

' The quiet gracefulness of Italian life, and the men- 



220 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

* tal maturity and vigour of Germany, have a great 
( charm when compared with the restless whirl of Eng- 
6 land, and the chorus of mingled yells and groans sent 
' up by our parties and sects, and by the suffering and 
' bewildered crowds of the labouring people. Our po- 
' litics make my heart ache, whenever I think of them. 
1 The base selfish frenzies of factions seem to me, at 
' this distance, half diabolic ; and I am out of the way 
( of knowing anything that may be quietly adoing to 
' elevate the standard of wise and temperate manhood 
' in the country, and to diffuse the means of physical 
' and moral wellbeing among all the people.' — ' I will 
1 write to my Father as soon as I can after reaching the 
' capital of his friend the Pope, - — who, if he had hap- 
f pened to be born an English gentleman, would no 
' doubt by this time be a respectable old-gentlemanly 
' gouty member of the Carlton. I have often amused 
e myself by thinking what a mere accident it is that 
' Phillpotts is not Archbishop of Tuam, and M'Hale 
' Bishop of Exeter ; and how slight a change of dress, 
i and of a few catchwords, would even now enable them 
1 to fill those respective posts with all the propriety and 
( discretion they display in their present positions.' 

At Rome he found the Crawfords, known to him 
long since ; and at different dates other English friends 
old and new ; and was altogether in the liveliest hu- 
mour, no end to his activities and speculations. Of all 
which, during the next four months, the Letters now 
before me give abundant record, — far too abundant for 
our objects here. His grand pursuit, as natural at 
Rome, was Art ; into which metaphysical domain we 
shall not follow him ; preferring to pick out, here and 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 221 

there, something of concrete and human. Of his inte- 
rests, researches, speculations and descriptions on this 
subject of Art, there is always rather a superabundance, 
especially in the Italian Tour. Unfortunately, in the 
hard weather, poor Calvert fell ill ; and Sterling, along 
with his Art-studies, distinguished himself as a sick- 
nurse till his poor comrade got afoot again. His gene- 
ral impressions of the scene and what it held for him 
may be read in the following excerpts. The Letters 
are all dated Rome, and addressed to his Father or 
Mother : 

December 21st, 1838. — ' Of Rome itself, as a whole, 
' there are infinite things to be said, well worth saying ; 
{ but I shall confine myself to two remarks : first, that 
' while the Monuments and works of Art gain in won- 
' drousness and significance by familiarity with them, 
f the actual life of Rome, the Papacy and its pride, 
' lose ; and though one gets accustomed to Cardinals 
e and Friars and Swiss Guards, and ragged beggars and 
{ the finery of London and Paris, all rolling on toge- 
' ther, and sees how it is that they subsist in a sort of 
i spurious unity, one loses all tendency to idealise the 
( Metropolis and System of the Hierarchy into anything 

* higher than a piece of showy stage-declamation, at 
1 bottom, in our day, thoroughly mean and prosaic. 
' My other remark is, that Rome, seen from the tower 
( of the Capitol, from the Pincian or the Janiculum, 
1 is at this day one of the most beautiful spectacles 
' which eyes ever beheld. The company of great 

* domes rising from a mass of large and solid build- 
' ings, with a few stone-pines and scattered edifices on 
( the outskirts ; the broken bare Campagna all around ; 
' the Alban Hills not far, and the purple range of Sa- 



JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

( bine Mountains in the distance with a cope of snow ; 
( — this seen in the clear air, and the whole spiritualised 
( by endless recollections, and a sense of the grave and 
f lofty reality of human existence which has had this 
' place for a main theatre, fills at once the eyes and 
' heart more forcibly, and to me delightfully, than I can 
' find words to say.' 

January 22d, 1839.— ' The Modern Rome, Pope and 
' all inclusive, are a shabby attempt at something ade- 
' quate to fill the place of the old Commonwealth. It 
' is easy enough to live among them, and there is much 
6 to amuse and even interest a spectator ; but the native 
s existence of the place is now thin and hollow, and 
' there is a stamp of littleness, and childish poverty of 
{ taste, upon all the great Christian buildings I have seen 
' here, — not excepting St. Peter's; which is crammed 
( with bits of coloured marble and gilding, and Gog-and- 
f Magog colossal statues of saints (looking prodigiously 
6 small), and mosaics from the worst pictures in Rome ; 
' and has altogether, with most imposing size and lavish 
i splendour, a tang of Guildhall finery about it that con- 
* trasts oddly with the melancholy vastness and simplicity 
' of the Ancient Monuments, though these have not the 
' Athenian elegance. I recur perpetually to the galleries 
1 of Sculpture in the Vatican, and to the Frescoes of 
' Raffael and Michael Angelo, of inexhaustible beauty 
' and greatness, and to the general aspect of the City and 
' the Country round it, as the most impressive scene 
' on earth. But the Modern City, with its churches, 
' palaces, priests and beggars, is far from sublime.' 

Of about the same date, here is another paragraph 
worth inserting : ' Gladstone has three little agate crosses 
' which he will give you for my little girls. Calvert 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 223 

' bought them, as a present for " the bodies," at Mar- 
i tigny in Switzerland, and I have had no earlier oppor- 
( tunity of sending them. Will you despatch them to 
' Hastings when you have an opportunity ? I have not 
( yet seen Gladstone's Church and State; but as there 
' is a copy in Rome, I hope soon to lay hands on it. I 
1 saw yesterday in the Times a furious, and I am sorry 
' to say, most absurd attack on him and it, and the new 
' Oxonian school.' 

February 28th, 1839. — ( There is among the people 
' plenty of squalid misery ; though not nearly so much 
6 as, they say, exists in Ireland ; and here there is a 
{ certain freedom and freshness of manners, a dash of 
' Southern enjoyment in the condition of the meanest 

* and most miserable. There is, I suppose, as little as 
' well can be of conscience or artificial cultivation of 
' any kind ; but there is not the affectation of a virtue 
' which they do not possess, nor any feeling of being 
e despised for the want of it ; and where life generally 
' is so inert, except as to its passions and material 

* wants, there is not the bitter consciousness of having 
i been beaten by the more prosperous, in a race which 
' the greater number have never thought of running. 
i Among the labouring poor of Rome, a bribe will buy 
{ a crime ; but if common work procures enough for a 
' day's food or idleness, ten times the sum will not in- 
' duce them to toil on, as an English workman would, 
1 for the sake of rising in the world. Sixpence any 
' day will put any of them at the top of the only tree 
' they care for, — that on which grows the fruit of 
f idleness. It is striking to see the way in which, in 
e magnificent churches, the most ragged beggars kneel 
( on the pavement before some favourite altar in the 



224 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' midst of well-dressed women and of gazing foreigners. 
- Or sometimes you will see one with a child come in 
' from the street where she has been begging, put her- 
' self in a corner, say a prayer (probably for the success 
( of her petitions), and then return to beg again. There 
' is wonderfully little of any moral strength connected 
' with this devotion ; but still it is better than nothing, 
' and more than is often found among the men of the 
( upper classes in Rome. I believe the Clergy to be 
( generally profligate, and the state of domestic morals 
' as bad as it has ever been represented.' — 

Or, in sudden contrast, take this other glance home- 
ward ; a Letter to his eldest child ; in which kind of 
Letters, more than in any other, Sterling seems to me 
to excel. Readers recollect the hurricane in St. Vin- 
cent ; the hasty removal to a neighbour's house, and 
the birth of a son there, soon after. The boy has 
grown to some articulation, during these seven years ; 
and his Father, from the new foreign scene of Priests 
and Dilettanti, thus addresses him : 

' To Master Edward C. Sterling, Hastings. 

' Rome, January 21st, 1839. 

' My dear Edward, — I was very glad to receive 
1 your Letter, which shewed me that you have learned 
1 something since I left home. If you knew how much 
1 pleasure it gave me to see your handwriting, I am sure 
6 you would take pains to be able to write well, that 
' you might often send me letters, and tell me a great 
' many things which I should like to know about Mamma 
* and your Sisters as well as yourself. 

* If I go to Vesuvius, I will try to carry away a bit 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 225 

' of the lava, which you wish for. There has lately 
' been a great eruption, as it is called, of that Mountain ; 
1 which means a great breaking out of hot ashes and fire, 
' and of melted stones which is called lava. 

' Miss Clark is very kind to take so much pains with 
' you ; and I trust you will shew that you are obliged 
' to her, by paying attention to all she tells you. When 
1 you see how much more grown people know than you, 
' you ought to be anxious to learn all you can from those 

* who teach you ; and as there are so many wise and 

* good things written in Books, you ought to try to read 
1 early and carefully, that you may learn something of 
' what God has made you able to know. There are 
1 Libraries containing very many thousands of Volumes ; 
1 and all that is written in these is, — accounts of some 
6 part or other of the World which God has made, or 
6 of the Thoughts which he has enabled men to have in 
' their minds. Some Books are descriptions of the earth 
' itself, with its rocks and ground and water, and of the 
6 air and clouds, and the stars and moon and sun, which 
' shine so beautifully in the sky. Some tell you about 
s the things that grow upon the ground ; the many 
' millions of plants, from little mosses and threads of 
( grass up to great trees and forests. Some also contain 
1 accounts of living things ; flies, worms, fishes, birds 
1 and four-legged beasts. And some, which are the most, 
i are about men and their thoughts and doings. These 
' are the most important of all ; for men are the best 

' and most wonderful creatures of God in the world; 
' being the only ones able to know him and love him, 
' and to try of their own accord to do his will. 

' These Books about men are also the most impor- 
' tant to us, because we ourselves are human beings, and 

Q 



226 JOHN STERLING, Part II. 

' may learn from such Books what we ought to think 
' and to do and to try to be. Some of them describe 
' wiiat sort of people have lived in old times and in 

* other countries. By reading them, we know what is 
1 the difference between ourselves in England now, and 
1 the famous Nations which lived in former days. Such 
' were the Egyptians who built the Pyramids, which are 
' the greatest heaps of stone upon the face of the earth : 
1 and the Babylonians, who had a city with* huge walls, 
1 built of bricks, having writing on them that no one in 
c our time has been able to make out. There were also 
' the Jews, who were the only ancient people that knew 
( how wonderful and how good God is : and the Greeks, 
1 who were the wisest of all in thinking about men's 

* lives and hearts, and who knew best how to make fine 
' statues and buildings, and to write wise books. By 
1 Books also we may learn what sort of people the old 
( Romans were, whose chief city was Rome, where I 
' am now ; and how brave and skilful they were in war ; 
1 and how well they could govern and teach many na- 
' tions which they had conquered. It is from Books, 
e too, that you must learn what kind of men were our 
e Ancestors in the Northern part of Europe, who be- 
' longed to the tribes that did the most towards pulling 
1 down the power of the Romans : and you will see in 
1 the same way how Christianity was sent among them 

* by God, to make them wiser and more peaceful, and 
' more noble in their minds ; and how all the nations 
' that now are in Europe, and especially the Italians 
' and the Germans, and the Fxen-ch and the English, 
' came to be what they now are. — It is well worth know- 
' ing (and it can be known only by reading) how the 
( Germans found out the Printing of Books, and what 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 227 

f great changes this has made in the world. And every- 
( body in England ought to try to understand how the 
* English came to have their Parliaments and Laws ; 
' and to have fleets that sail over all seas of the world. 

' Besides learning all these things, and a great many 
1 more about different times and countries, you may 
' learn from Books, what is the truth of God's will, 
( and what are the best and wisest thoughts, and the 
{ most beautiful words ; and how men are able to lead 
e very right lives, and to do a great deal to better the 
( world. I have spent a great part of my life in read- 
1 ing ; and I hope you will come to like it as much as I 
1 do, and to learn in this way all that I know. 

s But it is a still more serious matter that you should 
e try to be obedient and gentle ; and to command your 
e temper ; and to think of other people's pleasure rather 
' than your own, and of what you ought to do rather 
( than what you like. If you try to be better for all 
1 you read, as well as wiser, you will find Books a great 
1 help towards goodness as well as knowledge, — and 
' above all other Books, the Bible ; which tells us of 
e the will of God, and of the love of Jesus Christ to- 
( wards God and men. 

1 I had a Letter from Mamma today, which left 
1 Hastings on the 10th of this month. I was very glad 
i to find in it that you were all well and happy ; but I 
' know Mamma is not well, — and is likely to be more 
6 uncomfortable every day for some time. So I hope 
' you will all take care to give her as little trouble as 
' possible. After sending you so much advice, I shall 
' write a little Story to divert you. — I am, my dear 
' Boy, — Your affectionate Father, 

1 John Sterling.' 



228 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

The c Story' is lost, destroyed, as are many such 
which Sterling wrote, with great felicity, I am told, 
and much to the satisfaction of the young folk, when 
the humour took him. 

Besides these plentiful communications still left, I 
remember long Letters, not now extant, principally 
addressed to his Wife, of which we and the circle at 
Knightsbridge had due perusal, treating with animated 
copiousness about all manner of picture-galleries, pic- 
tures, statues and objects of Art at Rome, and on the 
road to Rome and from it, wheresoever his course led 
him into neighbourhood of such objects. That was 
Sterling's habit. It is expected in this Nineteenth 
Century that a man of culture shall understand and 
worship Art: among the windy gospels addressed to 
our poor Century there are few louder than this of 
Art ; — and if the Century expects that every man shall 
do his duty, surely Sterling was not the man to balk 
it ! Various extracts from these picture-surveys are 
given in Hare ; the others, I suppose, Sterling himself 
subsequently destroyed, not valuing them much. 

Certainly no stranger could address himself more 
eagerly to reap what artistic harvest Rome offers, which 
is reckoned the peculiar produce of Rome among cities 
under the sun ; to all galleries, churches, sistine chapels, 
ruins, coliseums, and artistic or dilettante shrines he 
zealously pilgrimed ; and had much to say then and 
afterwards, and with real technical and historical know- 
ledge I believe, about the objects of devotion there. 
But it often struck me as a question, Whether all this 
even to himself was not, more or less, a nebulous kind 
of element ; prescribed not by Nature and her verities, 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 229 

but by the Century expecting every man to do his duty ? 
Whether not perhaps, in good part, temporary dilet- 
tante cloudland of our poor Century; — or can it be 
the real diviner Pisgah height, and everlasting mount 
of vision, for man's soul in any Century ? And 1 think 
Sterling himself bent towards a negative conclusion, in 
the course of years. Certainly, of all subjects this was 
the one I cared least to hear even Sterling talk of: 
indeed it is a subject on which earnest men, abhorrent 
of hypocrisy and speech that has no meaning, are ad- 
monished to silence in this sad time, and had better, 
in such a Babel as we have got into for the present, 
6 perambulate their picture-gallery with little or no 
' speech.' 

Here is another and to me much more earnest kind 
of f Art,' which renders Rome unique among the cities 
of the world ; of this we will, in preference, take a glance 
through Sterling's eyes : 

January 22d, 1839. — ( On Friday last there was a 
f great Festival at St. Peter's ; the only one I have 
' seen. The Church was decorated with crimson hang- 
' ings, and the choir fitted up with seats and galleries, 
1 and a throne for the Pope. There were perhaps a 
1 couple of hundred guards of different kinds ; and three 
' or four hundred English ladies, and not so many fo- 

* reign male spectators ; so that the place looked empty. 
1 The Cardinals in scarlet, and Monsignori in purple, 
' were there ; and a body of officiating Clergy. The 
' Pope was carried-in in his chair on men's shoulders, 
' wearing the Triple Crown ; which I have thus actually 
' seen : it is something like a gigantic Egg, and of the 
' same colour, with three little bands of gold, — very 

* large Egg-shell with three streaks of the yolk smeared 



230 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

( round it. He was dressed in white silk robes, with 

* gold trimmings. 

' It was a fine piece of state-show ; though, as there 
' are three or four such Festivals yearly, of course there 
f is none of the eager interest which breaks out at coro- 
' nations and similar rare events ; no explosion of un- 
' wonted velvets, jewels, carriages and footmen, such as 
e London and Milan have lately enjoyed. I guessed 
( all the people in St. Peter's, including performers and 
' spectators, at 2000 ; where 20,000 would hardly have 
' been a crushing crowd. Mass was performed, and a 
' stupid but short Latin sermon delivered by a lad, in 
f honour of St. Peter, who would have. been much as- 
( tonished if he could have heard it. The genuflexions, 
' and trainbearings, and folding -up the tails of silk 
1 petticoats while the Pontiff knelt, and the train of 

* Cardinals going up to kiss his Ring, and so forth, — 
1 made on me the impression of something immeasurably 
' old and sepulchral, such as might suit the Grand Lama's 
1 court, or the inside of an Egyptian Pyramid ; or as if 
( the Hieroglyphics on one of the Obelisks here should 
' begin to pace and gesticulate, and nod their bestial 
' heads upon the granite tablets. The careless bystand- 

* ers, the London ladies with their eye-glasses and look 
( of an Opera-box, the yawning young gentlemen of the 
' Guarda Nobile, and the laugh of one of the file of 
' vermilion Priests round the steps of the altar at the 
' whispered good thing of his neighbour, brought one 
1 back to nothing indeed of a very lofty kind, but still 
' to the Nineteenth Century.' — 

' At the great Benediction of the City and the World 
' on Easter Sunday by the Pope,' he writes afterwards, 
' there was a large crowd both native and foreign, 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 231 

f hundreds of carriages, and thousands of the lower 
6 orders of people from the country ; but even of the 
( poor hardly one in twenty took off his hat, and a still 
( smaller number knelt down. A few years ago, not a 
( head was covered, nor was there a knee which did not 
' bow.' — A very decadent " Holiness of our Lord the 
Pope," it would appear ! — 

Sterling's view of the Pope, as seen in these his gala 
days, doing his big playactorism under God's earnest 
sky, was much more substantial to me than his studies 
in the picture-galleries. To Mr. Hare also he writes : 
' I have seen the Pope in all his pomp at St. Peter's ; 
' and he looked to me a mere lie in livery. The Romish 
' Controversy is doubtless a much more difficult one than 
6 the managers of the Religious-Tract Society fancy, 
1 because it is a theoretical dispute ; and in dealing with 
e notions and authorities, I can quite understand how a 
f mere student in a library, with no eye for facts, should 
6 take either one side or other. But how any man with 
( clear head and honest heart, and capable of seeing rea- 
6 lities, and distinguishing them from scenic falsehoods, 
' should, after living in a Romanist country, and espe- 
1 cially at Rome, be inclined to side with Leo against 
' Luther, I cannot understand.' * 

It is fit surely to recognise with admiring joy any 
glimpse of the Beautiful and the Eternal that is hung 
out for us, in colour, in form or tone, in canvass, stone, 
or atmospheric air, and made accessible by any sense, in 
this world : but it is greatly fitter still (little as we are 
used that way) to shudder in pity and abhorrence over 
the scandalous tragedy, transcendent nadir of human 
ugliness and contemptibility, which under the daring 
* Hare, p. cxviii. 



232 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

title of religious worship, and practical recognition of 
the Highest God, daily and hourly everywhere transacts 
itself there. And, alas, not there only, but elsewhere, 
everywhere more or less ; whereby our sense is so 
blunted to it ; — whence, in all provinces of human life, 
these tears ! — 

But let us take a glance at the Carnival, since we 
are here. The Letters, as before, are addressed to 
Knightsbridge ; the date Rome : 

February 5th, 1839. — ' The Carnival began yesterday. 
It is a curious example of the trifling things which 
will heartily amuse tens of thousands of grown people, 
precisely because they are trifling, and therefore a relief 
from serious business, cares and labours. The Corso is 
a street about a mile long, and about as broad as Jermyn 
Street; but bordered by much loftier houses, with 
many palaces and churches, and has two or three small 
squares opening into it. Carriages, mostly open, drove 
up and down it for two or three hours ; and the con- 
tents were shot at with handfuls of comfits from the 
window, — in the hope of making them as non-content 
as possible, — while they returned the fire to the best 
of their inferior ability. The populace, among whom 
was I, walked about ; perhaps one in fifty were 
masked in character ; but there was little in the mas- 
querade either of splendour of costume or liveliness of 
mimicry. However, the whole scene was very gay : 
there were a good many troops about, and some of 
them heavy dragoons, who flourished their swords with 
the magnanimity of our Life-Guards, to repel the en- 
croachments of too ambitious little boys. Most of 
the windows and balconies were hung with coloured 
drapery ; and there were flags, trumpets, nosegays and 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 233 

e flirtations of all shapes and sizes. The best of all was, 
' that there was laughter enough to have frightened 
' Cassius out of his thin carcass, could the lean old hom- 
' icide have been present, otherwise than as a fleshless 
' ghost; — in which capacity I thought I had a glimpse 
' of him looking over the shoulder of a parti-coloured 
' clown, in a carriage full of London Cockneys driving 
6 towards the Capitol. This good-humoured foolery 
( will go on for several days to come, ending always 
1 with the celebrated Horse-race, of horses without 
( riders. The long street is cleared in the centre by 
' troops, and half-a-dozen quadrupeds, ornamented like 
( Grimaldi in a London pantomime, scamper away, with 

* the mob closing and roaring at their heels.' 

February 9th, 1839. — ' The usual state of Rome is 
i quiet and sober. One could almost fancy the actual 
1 generation held their breath, and stole by on tiptoe, 

* in presence of so memorable a past. But during the 
( Carnival all mankind, womankind and childkind think 
1 it unbecoming not to play the fool. The modern 
{ donkey pokes its head out of the lion's skin of old 
' Rome, and brays out the absurdest of asinine round e- 
1 lays. Conceive twenty thousand grown people in a 
' long street, at the windows, on the footways and in 
' carriages, amused day after day for several hours in 
' pelting and being pelted with handfuls of mock or real 
' sugar-plums ; and this no name or pretence, but real 
f downright showers of plaster comfits, from which 
' people guard their eyes with meshes of wire. As sure 
f as a carriage passes under a window or balcony where 
' are acquaintances of theirs, down comes a shower of 
( hail, ineffectually returned from below. The parties 
' in two crossing carriages similarly assault each other ; 



234* JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

and there are long balconies hung the whole way with 
a deep canvass pocket full of this mortal shot. One 
Russian Grand Duke goes with a troop of youngsters 
in a wagon, all dressed in brown linen frocks and 
masked, and pelts among the most furious, also being 
pelted. The children are of course pre-eminently 
vigorous, and there is a considerable circulation of real 
sugar-plums, which supply consolation for all disap- 
pointments.' 

The whole to conclude, as is proper, with a display, 
with two displays, of fire-works ; in which art, as in 
some others, Rome is unrivalled : 

February 9th, 1839. — e It seems to be the ambition 
6 of all the lower classes to wear a mask and showy 
i grotesque disguise of some kind ; and I believe many 
f of the upper ranks do the same. They even put St. 
( Peter's into masquerade ; and make it a Cathedral of 
1 Lamplight instead of a stone one. Two evenings ago 
' this feat was performed ; and I was able to see it from 
' the rooms of a friend near this, which command an 
' excellent view of it. I never saw so beautiful an effect 
f of artificial light. The evening was perfectly serene 
' and clear ; the principal lines of the building, the 
' columns, architrave and pediment of the front, the two 
( inferior cupolas, the curves of the dome from which 
4 the dome rises, the ribs of the dome itself, the small 
i oriel windows between them, and the lantern and ball 
( and cross, — all were delineated in the clear vault of air 

* by lines of pale yellow fire. The dome of another 

* great Church, much nearer to the eye, stood up as a 
6 great black mass, — a funereal contrast to the luminous 
' tabernacle. 

1 While I was looking at this latter, a red blaze burst 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 235 

' from the summit, and at the same moment seemed to 
' flash over the whole building, filling up the pale out- 
' line with a simultaneous burst of fire. This is a cele- 
1 brated display ; and is done, I believe, by the employ- 
' ment of a very great number of men to light, at the 
e same instant, the torches which are fixed for the pur- 
' pose all over the building. After the first glare of 
1 fire, I did not think the second aspect of the building 
i so beautiful as the first ; it wanted both softness and 
' distinctness. The two most animated days of the Car- 
' nival are still to come.' 

April ^tli i 1839. — ' We have just come to the ter- 
' mination of all the Easter spectacles here. On Sunday 
1 evening St. Peter's was a second time illuminated; I 
( was in the Piazza, and admired the sight from a nearer 
' point than when I had seen it before at the time of the 
i Carnival. 

f On Monday evening the celebrated fire-works were 
' let off from the Castle of St. Angelo ; they were said 
( to be, in some respects, more brilliant than usual. I 
1 certainly never saw any fire-works comparable to them 
i for beauty. The Girandola is a discharge of many 
( thousands of rockets at once, which of course fall back, 
' like the leaves of a lily, and form for a minute a very 
' beautiful picture. There was also in silvery light a 
' very long Facade of a Palace, which looked a residence 
* for Oberon and Titania, and beat Aladdin's into dark- 
1 ness. Afterwards a series of cascades of red fire poured 
' down the faces of the Castle and of the scaffoldings 
1 round it, and seemed a burning Niagara. Of course 
' there were abundance of serpents, wheels and cannon- 
e shot ; there was also a display of dazzling white light, 
' which made a strange appearance on the houses, the 



£36 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' river, the bridge, and the faces of the multitude. The 
( whole ended with a second and a more splendid Gi- 
1 randola.' 

Take finally, to people the scene a little for us, if 
our imagination be at all lively, these three small en- 
tries, of different dates ; and so wind up : 

December 30th 3 1838. — ( I received on Christmas-day 
e a packet from Dr. Carlyle, containing Letters from the 
( Maurices ; which were a very pleasant arrival. The 
( Dr. wrote a few lines with them, mentioning that he 
' was only at Civita Yecchia while the steamer baited on 
' its way to Naples. I have written to thank him for 
f his despatches.' 

March I6lh, 1839. — i 1 have seen a good deal of 
1 John Mill, whose society I like much. He enters 
6 heartily into the interest of the things which I most 
' care for here, and I have seldom had more pleasure 
f than in taking him to see RafFael's Loggie, where are 
' the Frescoes called his Bible, and to the Sixtine Chapel, 
' which I admire and love more and more. He is in 
' very weak health, but as fresh and clear in mind as 
1 possible.' * * * i English politics seem in a queer 
e state, the Conservatives creeping on, the Whigs losing 
( ground ; like combatants on the top of a breach, while 
' there is a social mine below which will probably blow 
' both parties into the air.' 

April 4>th, 1839. — ( I walked out on Tuesday on the 
e Ancona Road, and about noon met a travelling car- 
f riage, which from a distance looked very suspicious, 
' and on nearer approach was found really to contain 
' Captain Sterling and an Albanian man-servant on the 
( front, and behind under the hood Mrs. A. Sterling and 



Chap. VII. ITALY. 237 

( the she portion of the tail. They seemed very well ; 
( and, having turned the Albanian back to the rear of 
c the whole machine, I sat by Anthony, and entered 
' Rome in triumph.' — Here is indeed a conquest ! Cap- 
tain A. Sterling, now on his return from service in 
Corfu, meets his Brother in this manner ; and the 
remaining Roman days are of a brighter complexion. 
As these suddenly ended, I believe he turned southward, 
and found at Naples the Dr. Carlyle above mentioned 
(an extremely intimate acquaintance of mine), who was 
still there. For we are a most travelling people, we 
of this Island in this time ; and, as the Prophet threat- 
ened, see ourselves, in so many senses, made ' like unto 
a wheel ! ' — 

Sterling returned from Italy filled with much cheer- 
ful imagery and reminiscence, and great store of artistic, 
serious, dilettant and other speculation for the time ; 
improved in health, too ; but probably little enriched 
in real culture or spiritual strength ; and indeed not 
permanently altered by his tour in any respect to a 
sensible extent, that one could notice. He returned 
rather in haste, and before the expected time ; sum- 
moned, about the middle of April, by his Wife's domes- 
tic situation at Hastings; who, poor lady, had been 
brought to bed before her calculation, and had in few 
days lost her infant; and now saw a household round 
her much needing the master's presence. He hurried 
off to Malta, dreading the Alps at that season ; and came 
home, by steamer, with all speed, early in May 1839. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



CLIFTON. 



Matters once readjusted at Hastings, it was thought 
Sterling's health had so improved, and his activities 
towards Literature so developed themselves into con- 
gruity, that a permanent English place of abode might 
now again be selected, — on the South-west coast some- 
where, — and the family once more have the blessing of 
a home, and see its lares and penates and household 
furniture unlocked from the Pantechnicon repositories, 
where they had so long been lying. 

Clifton, by Bristol, with its soft Southern winds and 
high cheerful situation, recommended too by the pre- 
sence of one or more valuable acquaintances there, was 
found to be the eligible place ; and thither in this sum- 
mer of 1839, having found a tolerable lodging, with the 
prospect by and by of an agreeable house, he and his 
removed. This was the end of what I call his ' third 
peregrinity ;' — or reckoning the West Indies one, his 
fourth. This also is, since Bayswater, the fourth time 
his family has had to shift on his account. Bayswater ; 
then to Bourdeaux, to Blackheath and Knightsbridge 
(during the Madeira time), to Hastings (Roman time) ; 
and now to Clifton, not to stay there either: a sadly 
nomadic life to be prescribed to a civilised man ! 

At Clifton his habitation was speedily enough set 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 239 

up ; household conveniences, methods of work, daily 
promenades on foot or horseback, and before long even 
a circle of friends, or of kindly neighbourhoods ripening 
into intimacy, were established round him. In all this 
no man could be more expert or expeditious, in such 
cases. It was with singular facility, in a loving, hoping 
manner, that he threw himself open to the new interests 
and capabilities of the new place ; snatched out of it 
whatsoever of human or material would suit him ; and 
in brief, in all senses had pitched his tent habitation, 
and grew to look on it as a house. It was beautiful 
too, as well as pathetic. This man saw himself reduced 
to be a dweller in tents, his house is but a stone tent ; 
and he can so kindly accommodate himself to that ar- 
rangement ; — healthy faculty and diseased necessity, 
nature and habit, and all manner of things primary 
and secondary, original and incidental, conspiring now 
to make it easy for him. With the evils of nomadism, 
he participated to the full in whatever benefits lie in it 
for a man. 

He had friends enough, old and new, at Clifton, 
whose intercourse made the place human for him. Per- 
haps among the most valued of the former sort may be 
mentioned Mrs. Edward Strachey, Widow of the late 
Indian Judge, who now resided here ; a cultivated, 
graceful, most devout and highminded lady ; whom he 
had known in old years, first probably as Charles Bul- 
ler's Aunt, and whose esteem was constant for him, and 
always precious to him. She was some ten or twelve 
years older than he ; she survived him some years, but 
is now also gone from us. Of new friends acquired 
here, besides a skilful and ingenious Dr. Simmons, 
physician as well as friend, the principal was Francis 



240 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

Newman, then and still an ardently inquiring soul, of 
fine University and other attainments, of sharp-cutting 
restlessly advancing intellect, and the mildest pious en- 
thusiasm; whose worth, since better known to all the 
world, Sterling highly estimated; — and indeed practi- 
cally testified the same ; having by will appointed him, 
some years hence, guardian to his eldest Son ; which 
pious function Mr. Newman now successfully discharges. 

Sterling was not long in certainty as to his abode at 
Clifton : alas, where could he long be so ? Hardly six 
months were gone when his old enemy again overtook 
him ; again admonished him how frail his hopes of per- 
manency were. Each winter, it turned out, he had to 
fly ; and after the second of these, he quitted the place 
altogether. Here, meanwhile, in a Letter to myself, and 
in Excerpts from others, are some glimpses of his advent 
and first summer there : 

Clifton, June llth, 1839 (To his Mother). — < As yet 
i I am personally very uncomfortable from the general 
' confusion of this house, which deprives me of my room 
' to sit and read and write in ; all being more or less 
( lumbered by boxes, and invaded by servile domesti- 
6 cities aproned, handled, bristled, and of nondescript 
' varieties. We have very fine warm weather, with 
( occasional showers ; and the verdure of the woods 
4 and fields is very beautiful. Bristol seems as busy as 
( need be ; and the shops and all kinds of practical con- 
i veniences are excellent ; but those of Clifton have the 
i usual sentimental, not to say meretricious fraudulence 
1 of commercial establishments in Watering-places. 

' The bag which Hannah forgot reached us safely at 
( Bath on Friday morning ; but I cannot quite unriddle 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 241 

1 the mystery of the change of padlocks, for I left the 
' right one in care of the Head Steam-engine at Pad- 
' dington, which seemed a very decent person with a good 
' black coat on, and a pen behind its ear. I have been 
' meditating much on the story of Palarea's " box of 
' papers ;" which does not appear to be in my posses- 

* sion, and I have a strong impression that I gave it to 
c young Florez Calderon. I will write to say so to 
f Madam Torrijos speedily.' — Palarea, Dr. Palarea, I 
understand, was ' an old guerrilla leader whom they 
called El Medico.' Of him and of the vanished sha- 
dows, now gone to Paris, to Madrid, or out of the 
world, let us say nothing ! 

June 15th, 1839 (To myself). — ( We have a room 
' now occupied by Robert Barton,' a brother-in-law ; 
' to which Anthony may perhaps succeed ; but which 

* after him, or in lieu of him, would expand itself to 
' receive you. Is there no hope of your coming ? I 
1 would undertake to ride with you at all possible paces, 
' and in all existing directions. 

' As yet my books are lying as ghost books, in a 
' limbo on the banks of a certain Bristolian Styx, hu- 
1 manly speaking, a Canal; but the other apparatus 
' of life is gathered about me, and performs its diurnal 

* functions. The place pleases me better than I ex- 
' pected : A far look-out on all sides, over green coun- 
' try ; a sufficient old City lying in the hollow near ; 
1 and civilisation, in no tumultuous state, rather indeed 
1 stagnant, visible in the Rows of Houses and Gardens 
' which call themselves Clifton. I hope soon to take 

* a lease of a house, where I may arrange myself more 
' methodically ; keep myself equably boiling in my 
' own kitchen ; and spread myself over a series of book- 
it 



242 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' shelves.' — s I have just been interrupted by a visit 
' from Mrs. Strachey ; with whom I dined yesterday. 
' She seems a very good and thoroughly kind-hearted 
' woman ; and it is pleasant to have her for a neigh- 
1 bour.' — 1 1 have read Emerson's Pamphlets. I should 
' find it more difficult than ever to write to him.' 

June 30th, 1839 (To his Father). — < Of Books 
e I shall have no lack, though no plethora ; and the 
f Reading-room supplies all one can want in the way 
( of Papers and Reviews. I go there three or four 
' times a week, and inquire how the human race goes 
' on. I suppose this Turco-Egyptian War will throw 
' several diplomatists into a state of great excitement, 
f and massacre a good many thousands of Africans and 
' Asiatics? — For the present, it appears, the English 
' Education Question is settled. I wish the Govern- 
( ment had said that, in their inspection and superinten- 
' dence, they would look only to secular matters, and 
e leave religious ones to the persons who set up the 
' schools, whoever these might be. It seems to me 
1 monstrous that the State should be prevented taking 
{ any efficient measures for teaching Roman Catholic 
' children to read, write and cipher, merely because they 
{ believe in the Pope, and the Pope is an impostor, — 
' which I candidly confess he is ! There is no question 
1 which I can so ill endure to see made a party one as 
\ that of Education.' — The following is of the same day : 

' To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

' Manor House, Clifton Place, Clifton, 
' June 30th, 1839. 

' My dear Carlyle, — I have heard, this morning, 
* from my Father, that you are to set out on Tuesday 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 243 

' for Scotland : so I have determined to fillip away some 
e spurt of ink in your direction, which may reach you 
' before you move towards Thule. 

{ Writing to you, in fact, is considerably easier than 
{ writing about you ; which has been my employment 
f of late, at leisure moments, — that is, moments of lei- 
' sure from idleness, not work. As you partly guessed, 
( I took in hand a Review of Tevfelsdrdchli — for want 
1 of a better Heuschrecke to do the work ; and when I 
( have been well enough, and alert enough, during the 
1 last fortnight, have tried to set down some notions 
i about Tobacco, Radicalism, Christianity, Assafcetida 
' and so forth. But a few abortive pages are all the 
e result as yet. If my speculations should ever see 
' daylight, they may chance to get you into scrapes, 
' but will certainly get me into worse.' * * * ' But 
' one must work; sic itur ad astra, — and the astra are 
' always there to befriend one, at least as asterisks, fill- 
' ing up the gaps which yawn in vain for words. 

' Except my unsuccessful efforts to discuss you and 

* your offences, I have done nothing that leaves a trace 
' behind ; — unless the endeavour to teach my little boy 
s the Latin declensions shall be found, at some time 
' short of the Last Day, to have done so. I have, — 
c rather I think from dyspepsia than dyspneumony, — 
( been often and for days disabled from doing anything 
' but read. In this way I have gone through a good 
( deal of Strauss's Book ; which is exceedingly clever 
1 and clear-headed ; with more of insight, and less of 
1 destructive rage than I expected. It will work deep 

* and far, in such a time as ours. When so many minds 
( are distracted about the history, or rather genesis of 
c the Gospel, it is a great thing for partisans on the one 



244 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' side to have, what the other never have wanted, a 
' Book of which they can say, This is our Creed and 
' Code, — or rather Anti-creed and Anti-code. And 
t Strauss seems perfectly secure against the sort of an- 
1 swer to which Voltaire's critical and historical shallow- 
' ness perpetually exposed him. I mean to read the 
' Book through. It seems admitted that the orthodox 
' theologians have failed to give any sufficient answer. 
1 — I have also looked through Michelet's Luther, with 
1 great delight ; and have read the fourth volume of 
' Coleridge's Literary Remains, in which there are things 
' that would interest you. He has a great hankering 
' after Cromwell, and explicitly defends the execution 
' of Charles. 

f Of Mrs. Strachey we have seen a great deal ; and 
' might have seen more, had T had time and spirits for 
' it. She is a warmhearted, enthusiastic creature, whom 
c one cannot but like. She seems always excited by the 
1 wish for more excitement than her life affords. And 
( such a person is always in danger of doing something 
' less wise than his best knowledge and aspirations ; 
' because he must do something, and circumstances do 
6 not allow him to do what he desires. Thence, after 
6 the first glow of novelty, endless self-tormenting comes 
' from the contrast between aims and acts. She sets 
e out, with her daughter and two boys, for a Tour in 
' Wales to-morrow morning. Her talk of you is always 
' most affectionate ; and few, I guess, will read Sartor 
( with more interest than she. 

i I am still in a very extempore condition as to house, 
1 books, &c. One which I have hired for three years 
' will be given up to me in the middle of August ; and 
' then I may hope to have something like a house, — so 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 245 

far as that is possible for any one to whom Time itself 
is often but a worse or a better kind of cave in the de- 
sert. We have had rainy and cheerless weather almost 
since the day of our arrival. But the sun now shines 
more lovingly, and the skies seem less disdainful of 
man and his perplexities. The earth is green, abun- 
dant and beautiful. But human life, so far as I can 
learn, is mean and meagre enough in its purposes, 
however striking to the speculative or sentimental by- 
stander. Pray be assured that whatever you may say 
of the "landlord at Clifton,"* the more I know of 
him, the less I shall like him. "Well with me if I can 
put up with him for the present, and make use of 
him, till at last I can joyfully turn him off forever ! 

( Love to your Wife and self, My little Charlotte de- 
sires me to tell you that she has new shoes for her Doll, 
which she will shew you when you come. — Yours, 

' John Sterling.' 

The visit to Clifton never took effect ; nor to any 
of Sterling's subsequent homes; which now is matter 
of regret to me. Concerning the ' Review of Teufels- 
drbekh' there will be more to say anon. As to ' little 
Charlotte and her Doll,' I remember well enough and 
was more than once reminded, this bright little crea- 
ture, on one of my first visits to Bays water, had ear- 
nestly applied to me to put her Doll's shoes on for her ; 
which feat was performed. — The next fragment indi- 
cates a household settled, fallen into wholesome routine 
again ; and may close the series here : 

July 22d, 1839 (To his Mother). — ' A few even- 
' ings ago we went to Mr. Griffin's, and met there Dr. 
* Of Sterling himself, I suppose. 



246 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

1 Prichard, the author of a well-known Book on the 
1 Races of Mankind, to which it stands in the same 
6 relation among English books as the Racing Calendar 
' does to those of Horsekind. He is a very intelligent, 
1 accomplished person. We had also there the Dean ; 

' a certain Dr. of Corpus College, Cambridge (a 

e booby) ; and a clever fellow, a Mr. Fisher, one of 
1 the Tutors of Trinity in my days. We had a very 
* pleasant evening.' — 

At London we were in the habit of expecting Ster- 
ling pretty often ; his presence, in this house as in 
others, was looked for, once in the month or two, and 
came always as sunshine in the grey weather to me and 
mine. My daily walks with him had long since been 
cut short without renewal; that walk to Eltham and 
Edgeworth's perhaps the last of the kind he and I had : 
but our intimacy, deepening and widening year after 
year, knew no interruption or abatement of increase ; 
an honest, frank and truly human mutual relation, valu- 
able or even invaluable to both parties, and a lasting 
loss, hardly to be replaced in this world, to the survivor 
of the two. 

His visits, which were usually of two or three days, 
were always full of business, rapid in movement as all 
his life was. To me, if possible, he would come in the 
evening ; a whole cornucopia of talk and speculation 
was to be discharged. If the evening would not do, 
and my affairs otherwise permitted, I had to mount 
into cabs with him ; fly far and wide, shuttling athwart 
the big Babel, wherever his calls and pauses had to be. 
This was his way to husband time ! Our talk, in such 
straitened circumstances, was loud or low as the cir- 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 247 

cumambient groaning rage of wheels and sound pre- 
scribed, — very loud it had to be in such thoroughfares 
as London Bridge and Cheapside ; but except while he 
was absent, off for minutes into some banker's office, 
lawyer's, stationer's, haberdasher's or what office there 
might be, it never paused. In this way extensive strange 
dialogues were carried on : to me also very strange, — 
private friendly colloquies, on all manner of rich sub- 
jects, held thus amid the chaotic roar of things. Ster- 
ling was full of speculations, observations and bright 
sallies ; vividly awake to what was passing in the world ; 
glanced pertinently with victorious clearness, without 
spleen, though often enough with a dash of mockery, 
into its Puseyisms, Liberalisms, literary Lionisms, or 
what else the mad hour might be producing, — always 
prompt to recognise what grain of sanity might be in 
the same. He was opulent in talk, and the rapid move- 
ment and vicissitude on such occasions seemed to give 
him new excitement. 

Once, I still remember, — it was some years before, 
probably in May, on his return from Madeira, — he un- 
dertook a day's riding with me ; once and never again. 
"We coursed extensively over the Hampstead and High- 
gate regions, and the country beyond, sauntering or 
galloping through many leafy lanes and pleasant places, 
in evernowing, everchanging talk ; and returned down 
Regent Street at nightfall : one of the cheerfullest days 
I ever had ; — -not to be repeated, said the Fates. Ster- 
ling was charming on such occasions : at once a child 
and a gifted man. A serious fund of thought he always 
had, a serious drift you never missed in him : nor indeed 
had he much depth of real laughter or sense of the ludi- 
crous, as I have elsewhere said; but what he had was 



248 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

genuine, free and continual: his sparkling sallies bub- 
bled up as from aerated natural fountains ; a mild dash 
of gaiety was native to the man, and had moulded his 
physiognomy in a very graceful way. We got once into 
a cab, about Charing Cross ; I know not now whence 
or well whitherward, nor that our haste was at all spe- 
cial ; however, the cabman, sensible that his pace was 
slowish, took to whipping, with a steady, passionless, 
business-like assiduity which, though the horse seemed 
lazy rather than weak, became afflictive : and I urged 
remonstrance with the savage fellow : " Let him alone," 
answered Sterling ; " he is kindling the enthusiasm of 
" his horse, you perceive ; that is the first thing, then 
" we shall do very well I" — as accordingly we did. 

At Clifton, though his thoughts began to turn more 
on poetic forms of composition, he was diligent in prose 
elaborations too, — doing Criticism, for one thing, as we 
incidentally observed. He wrote there, and sent forth 
in this autumn of 1839, his most important contribution 
to John Mill's Review, the Article on Carlyle, which 
stands also in Mr. Hare's collection.* "What its effect on 
the public was I knew not, and know not ; but remem- 
ber well, and may here be permitted to acknowledge, 
the deep silent joy, not of a weak or ignoble nature, 
which it gave to myself in my then mood and situation ; 
as it well might. The first generous human recognition, 
expressed with heroic emphasis, and clear conviction 
visible amid its fiery exaggeration, that one's poor battle 
in this world is not quite a mad and futile, that it is 
perhaps a worthy and manful one, which will come to 
something yet : this fact is a memorable one in every 
* Hare, i. p. 252. 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 249 

history ; and for me Sterling, often enough the stiff 
gainsayer in our private communings, was the doer of i 
this. The thought burnt in me like a lamp, for several 
days; lighting up into a kind of heroic splendour the 
sad volcanic wrecks, abysses and convulsions of said poor 
battle ; and secretly I was very grateful to my daring 
friend, and am still, and ought to be. What the public 
might be thinking about him and his audacities, and me 
in consequence, or whether it thought at all, I never 
learned, or much heeded to learn. 

Sterling's gainsaying had given way on many points; 
but on others it continued stiff as ever, as may be seen 
in that Article ; indeed he fought Parthian-like in such 
cases, holding out his last position as doggedly as the 
first : and to some of my notions he seemed to grow in 
stubbornness of opposition, with the growing inevitabi- 
lity, and never would surrender. Especially that doctrine 
of the ' greatness and fruitfulness of Silence,' remained 
afflictive and incomprehensible: "Silence?" he would 
say : " Yes, truly ; if they give you leave to proclaim 
silence by cannon-salvoes ! My Harpocrates-Stentor !" 
In like manner, ' Intellect and Virtue,' how they are 
proportional, or are indeed one gift in us, the same great 
summary of gifts ; and again, c Might and Right,' the 
identity of these two, if a man will understand this 
God's-Universe, and that only he who conforms to the 
law of it can in the longrun have any ' might:' all this, 
at the first blush, often awakened Sterling's musketry 
upon me, and many volleys I have had to stand, — the 
thing not being decidable by that kind of weapon or 
strategy. 

In such cases your one method was to leave our 
friend in peace. By small-arms practice no mortal 



250 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

could dislodge him : but if you were in the right, the 
silent hours would work continually for you ; and Ster- 
ling, more certainly than any man, would and must at 
length swear fealty to the right, and passionately adopt 
it, burying all hostilities under foot. A more candid 
soul, once let the stormful velocities of it expend them- 
selves, was nowhere to be met with. A son of light, if 
I have ever seen one ; recognising the truth, if truth 
there were ; hurling overboard his vanities, petulances, 
big and small interests, in ready loyalty to truth : very 
beautiful ; at once a loyal child, as I said, and a gifted 
man! — Here is a very pertinent passage from one of 
his Letters, which, though the name continues blank, I 
will insert : 

October \5tli, 1839 {To Ms Father).— 'As to my 

' " over-estimate of ," your expressions rather 

' puzzle me. I suppose there may be, at the outside, 
6 a hundred persons in England whose opinions on such 
' a matter are worth as much as mine. If by " the 
' public " you and my Mother mean the other ninety- 
6 nine, I submit. I have no doubt that, on any matter 
' not relating peculiarly to myself, the judgment of the 
f ninety -nine most philosophical heads in the country, 
f if unanimous, would be right, and mine, if opposed to 
( them, wrong. But then I am at a loss to make out, 
' How the decision of the very few really competent 
' persons has been ascertained to be thus in contradic- 
1 tion to me ? And on the other hand, I conceive my- 
1 self, from my opportunities, knowledge and attention 
f to the subject, to be alone quite entitled to outvote 
f tens of thousands of gentlemen, however much my 
1 superiors as men of business, men of the world, or men 
• of merely dry or merely frivolous literature. 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 251 

■ f I do not remember ever before to have heard the 
6 saying, whether of Talleyrand or of any one else, 
' That all the world is a wiser man than any man in 
' the world. Had it been said even by the Devil, it 
i would nevertheless be false. I have often indeed 
' heard the saying, On peut etre plus fin qu'un autre, 
' mais pas plus fin que tous les autres. But observe 
( that "fin" means cunning, not wise. The difference 
c between this assertion and the one you refer to is 
6 curious, and worth examining. It is quite certain, 
1 there is always some one man in the world wiser than 
' all the rest ; as Socrates was declared by the Oracle to 
( be; and as, I suppose, Bacon was in his day, and per- 
' haps Burke in his. There is also some one, whose 
6 . opinion would be probably true, if opposed to that of 
' all around him ; and it is always indubitable that the 

* wise men are the scores, and the unwise the millions. 
6 The millions indeed come round, in the course of a 
1 generation or two, to the opinions of the wise ; but by 
' that time a new race of wise men have again shot 
( ahead of their contemporaries : so it has always been, 
f and so, in the nature of things, it always must be. But 
- with cunning, the matter is quite different. Cunning 

* is not dishonest wisdom, which would be a contradic- 
{ tion in terms ; it is dishonest prudence, acuteness in 
' practice, not in thought : and though there must al- 
6 ways be some one the most cunning in the world, as 
: well as some one the most wise, these two superlatives 
' will fare very differently in the world. In the case of 
' cunning, the shrewdness of a whole people, of a whole 
' generation, may doubtless be combined against that of 

* the one, and so triumph over it ; which was pretty 
' much the case with Napoleon. But although a man 



252 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

( of the greatest cunning can hardly conceal his designs 
6 and true character from millions of unfriendly eyes, it 
' is quite impossible thus to club the eyes of the mind, 
e and to constitute by the union of ten thousand follies 
f an equivalent for a single wisdom. A hundred school- 
' boys can easily unite and thrash their one master ; but 
1 a hundred thousand schoolboys would not be nearer 
( than a score to knowing as much Greek among them 
i as Bentley or Scaliger. To all which, I believe, you 
( will assent as readily as I; — and I have written it 
6 down only because I have nothing more important to 
' say.'— 

Besides his prose labours, Sterling had by this time 
written, publishing chiefly in Blackwood, a large assort- 
ment of verses, Sextons Daughter, Hymns of a Hermit, 
and I know not what other extensive stock of pieces ; 
concerning which he was now somewhat at a loss as to 
his true course. He could write verses with astonishing 
facility, in any given form of metre ; and to various 
readers they seemed excellent, and high judges had 
freely called them so, but he himself had grave misgiv- 
ings on that latter essential point. In fact here once 
more was a parting of the ways, " Write in Poetry ; 
write in Prose?" upon which, before all else, it much 
concerned him to come to a settlement. 

My own advice was, as it had always been, steady 
against Poetry ; and we had colloquies upon it, which 
must have tried his patience, for in him there was a 
strong leaning the other way. But, as I remarked 
and urged : Had he not already gained superior ex- 
cellence in delivering, by way of speech or prose, what 
thoughts were in him, which is the grand and only 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 253 

intrinsic function of a writing man, call him by what 
title you will? Cultivate that superior excellence till 
it become a perfect and superlative one. Why sing 
your bits of thoughts, if you can contrive to speak them ? 
By your thought, not by your mode of delivering it, 
you must live or die. — Besides I had to observe there 
was in Sterling intrinsically no depth of tune; which 
surely is the real test of a Poet or Singer, as distin- 
guished from a Speaker ? In music proper he had not 
the slightest ear ; all music was mere impertinent noise 
to him, nothing in it perceptible but the mere march or 
time. Nor in his way of conception and utterance, in 
the verses he wrote, was there any contradiction, but a 
constant confirmation to me, of that fatal prognostic; — 
as indeed the whole man, in ear and heart and tongue, 
is one ; and he whose soul does not sing, need not try 
to do it with his throat. Sterling's verses had a mono- 
tonous rub-a-dub, instead of tune ; no trace of music 
deeper than that of a well-beaten drum ; to which limit- 
ed range of excellence the substance also corresponded ; 
being intrinsically always a rhymed and slightly rhyth- 
mical speech, not a song. 

In short, all seemed to me to say, in his case : "You 
" can speak with supreme excellence ; sing with consi- 
" derable excellence you never can. And the Age itself, 
" does it not, beyond most ages, demand and require 
" clear speech ; an Age incapable of being sung to, in any 
" but a trivial manner, till these convulsive agonies and 
" wild revolutionary overturnings readjust themselves ? 
" Intelligible word of command, not musical psalmody 
" and fiddling, is possible in this fell storm of battle. 
" Beyond all ages, our Age admonishes whatsoever 
" thinking or writing man it has : Oh speak to me, some 



254 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

" wise intelligible speech ; your wise meaning, in the 
" shortest and clearest way ; behold, I am dying for 
" want of wise meaning, and insight into the devouring 
" fact : speak, if you have any wisdom ! As to song 
" so-called, and your fiddling talent, — even if you have 
" one, much more if you have none, — we will talk of 
(C that a couple of centuries hence, when things are 
" calmer again. Homer shall be thrice welcome ; but 
" only when Troy is taken : alas, while the siege lasts, 
" and battle's fury rages everywhere, what can I do 
" with the Homer ? I want Achilleus and Odysseus, 
" and am enraged to see them trying to be Homers!" — 

Sterling, who respected my sincerity, and always was 
amenable enough to counsel, was doubtless much con- 
fused by such contradictory diagnosis of his case. The 
question, Poetry or Prose? became more and more 
pressing, more and more insoluble. He decided, at 
last, to appeal to the public upon it; — got readjr, in 
the late autumn, a small select Volume of his verses ; 
and was now busy pushing it through the press. Un- 
fortunately, in the meanwhile, a grave illness, of the 
old pulmonary sort, overtook him, which at one time 
threatened to be dangerous. This is a glance again 
into his interior household in these circumstances : 

December 2lst, 1839 (To Ms Mother).—' The Tin- 
e box came quite safe, with all its miscellaneous con- 
' tents. I suppose we are to thank you for the Comic 
' Almanack, which, as usual, is very amusing ; and for 
( the Book on Watt, which disappointed me. The 
' scientific part is no doubt very good, and particularly 
6 clear and simple ; but there is nothing remarkable in 
e the account of Watt's character ; and it is an absurd 
s piece of French impertinence in Arago to say, that 



Chap. VIII. CLIFTON. 255 

{ England has not yet learnt to appreciate men like 
i Watt, because he was not made a peer ; which, were 
f our peerage an institution like that of France, would 
* have been very proper. 

c I have now finished correcting the proofs of my 
' little Volume of Poems. It has been a great plague 
1 to me, and one that I would not have incurred, had I 
' expected to be laid up as I have been ; but the matter 
' was begun before I had any notion of being disabled 
' by such an illness, — the severest I have suffered since 
c I went to the West Indies. The Book will, after all, 
' be a botched business in many respects ; and I much 
i doubt whether it will pay its expenses : but I try to 
' consider it as out of my hands, and not to fret my- 
( self about it. I shall be very curious to see Carlyle's 
{ Tractate on Chartism ; which' — But we need not enter 
upon that. 

Sterling's little Book was printed at his own ex- 
pense ; published by Moxon in the very end of this 
year.* It carries an appropriate and pretty Epigraph : 

' Feeling, Thought and Fancy be 

6 Gentle sister Graces three : 
' If these prove averse to me, 

' They will punish, — pardon Ye !' 

He had dedicated the little Volume to Mr. Hare ; — 
and he submitted very patiently to the discouraging 
neglect with which it was received by the world : for 
indeed the 'Ye' said nothing audible, in the way of 
pardon or other doom ; so that whether the ' sister 
Graces' were averse or not, remained as doubtful as 
ever. 

* Poems by John Sterling. London (Moxon), 1839. 



CHAPTER IX. 



TWO WINTERS. 



As we said above, it had been hoped by Sterling's 
friends, not very confidently by himself, that in the 
gentler air of Clifton his health might so far recover as 
to enable him to dispense with autumnal voyages, and 
to spend the year all round in a house of his own. 
These hopes, favourable while the warm season lasted, 
broke down when winter came. In November of this 
same year, while his little Volume was passing through 
the press, bad and worse symptoms, spitting of blood 
to crown the sad list, reappeared ; and Sterling had to 
equip himself again, at this late season, for a new flight 
to Madeira ; wherein the good Calvert, himself suffer- 
ing, and ready on all grounds for such an adventure, 
offered to accompany him. Sterling went by land to 
Falmouth, meaning there to wait for Calvert, who was 
to come by the Madeira Packet, and there take him on 
board. 

Calvert and the Packet did arrive, in stormy Janu- 
ary weather ; which continued wildly blowing for weeks ; 
forbidding all egress Westward, especially for invalids. 
These elemental tumults, and blustering wars of sea 
and sky, with nothing but the misty solitude of Madeira 
in the distance, formed a very discouraging outlook. In 
the meanwhile Falmouth itself had offered so many re- 
sources, and seemed so tolerable in climate and other- 



Chap. IX. TWO WINTERS. 257 

wise, while this wintry ocean looked so inhospitable for 
invalids, it was resolved our voyagers should stay where 
they were till spring returned. Which accordingly was 
done ; with good effect for that season, and also with 
results for the coming seasons. Here again, from Let- 
ters to Knightsbridge, are some glimpses of his winter 
life: 

Falmouth, February 5th, 1840. — ' 1 have been today 
' to see a new tin-mine, two or three miles off, which 
1 is expected to turn into a copper-mine by and by, so 
6 they will have the two constituents of bronze close 
' together. This, by the way, was the "brass" of 
' Homer and the Ancients generally, who do not seem 
6 to have known our brass made of copper and zinc. 
* Achilles in his armour must have looked like a bronze 
' statue. — I took Sheridan's advice, and did not go down 
1 the mine.' 

February 15th. — ' To some iron-works the other 
1 day ; where I saw half the beam of a great steam- 
1 engine, a piece of iron forty feet long and seven broad, 
1 cast in about five minutes. It was a very striking 
1 spectacle. I hope to go to Penzance before I leave 
' this country ; and will not fail to tell you about it.' — 
He did make trial of Penzance, among other places, 
next year ; but only of Falmouth this. 

February 20th. — e I am going on asy here, in spite 
' of a great change of weather. The East winds are 
' come at last ; bringing with them snow, which has 
1 been driving about for the last twenty-four hours ; 
' not falling heavily, nor lying long when fallen. Nei- 
' ther is it as yet very cold, but I suppose there will 
' be some six weeks of unpleasant temperature. The 
s marine climate of this part of England will, no doubt, 

s 



258 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' modify and mollify the air into a happier sort of sub- 
' stance than that you breathe in London. 

' The large vessels that had been lying here for 
e weeks, waiting for a wind, have now sailed ; two of 
1 them for the East Indies, and having three hundred 
' soldiers on board. It is a curious thing that the long- 
( continued westerly winds had so prevented the coasters 
' arriving, that the Town was almost on the point of a 
' famine as to bread. The change has brought in abun- 
' dance of flour. — The people in general seem extremely 
1 comfortable ; their houses are excellent, almost all of 
' stone. Their habits are very little agricultural, but 
( mining and fishing seem to prosper with them. There 
6 are hardly any gentry here ; 1 have not seen more 
' than two gentlemen's carriages in the Town ; indeed 
' I think the nearest one comes from five miles off.' 

' I have been obliged to try to occupy myself with 
' Natural Science, in order to give some interest to my 
e walks ; and have begun to feel my way in Geology. 
1 I have now learnt to recognise three or four of the 
c common kinds of stone about here, when I see them ; 
6 but I find it stupid work compared with Poetry and 
' Philosophy. In the mornings, however, for an hour 
( or so before I get up, I generally light my candle, and 
6 try to write some verses ; and since I have been here, 
e I have put together short poems, almost enough for an- 
' other small volume. In the evenings I have gone on 
c translating some of Goethe. But six or seven hours 
' spent on my legs, in the open air, do not leave my brain 
' much energy for thinking. Thus my life is a dull and 
' unprofitable one, but still better than it would have 
' been in Madeira or on board ship. I hear from Susan 
' every day, and write to her by return of post.' 



Chap. IX. TWO WINTERS. 259 

At Falmouth Sterling had been warmly welcomed 
by the well-known Quaker family of the Foxes, prin- 
cipal people in that place, persons of cultivated opulent 
habits, and joining to the fine purities and pieties of 
their sect a reverence for human intelligence in all 
kinds ; to whom such a visitor as Sterling was natur- 
ally a welcome windfall. The family had grave elders, 
bright cheery younger branches, men and women ; truly 
amiable all, after their sort : they made a pleasant image 
of home for Sterling in his winter exile. s Most wor- 
' thy, respectable and highly cultivated people, with a 
( great deal of money among them,' writes Sterling in 
the end of February ; ' who make the place pleasant to 

* me. They are connected with all the large Quaker 
' circle, the Grurneys, Frys, &c, and also with Buxton 
c the Abolitionist. It is droll to hear them talking of 

* all the common topics of science, literature and life, 

* and in the midst of it : " Does thou know Words- 
' worth ?" or, " Did thou see the Coronation ?" or, 
( " Will thou take some refreshment ?" They are very 
' kind and pleasant people to know. 

( Calvert,' continues our Diarist, { is better than he 
' lately was, though he has not been at all laid up. He 
' shoots little birds, and dissects and stuffs them ; while 
1 I carry a hammer, and break flints and slates, to look 
' for diamonds and rubies inside ; and admire my suc- 

* cess in the evening, when I empty my greatcoat pocket 
' of its specimens. On the whole, I doubt whether 
' my physical proceedings will set the Thames on fire. 
1 Give my love to Anthony's Charlotte ; also remember 
' me affectionately to the Carlyles.' — 

At this time, too, John Mill, probably encouraged 
by Sterling, arrived in Falmouth, seeking refuge of 



260 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

climate for a sickly younger Brother, to whom also, 
while he continued there, and to his poor patient, the 
doors and hearts of this kind family were thrown wide 
open. Falmouth during these winter weeks, especially 
while Mill continued, was an unexpectedly engaging 
place to Sterling ; and he left it in spring, for Clifton, 
with a very kindly image of it in his thoughts. So 
ended, better than it might have done, his first year's 
flight from the Clifton winter. 

In April 1840 he was at his own hearth again ; 
cheerily pursuing his old labours, — struggling to redeem, 
as he did with a gallant constancy, the available months 
and days, out of the wreck of so many that were unavail- 
able, for the business allotted him in this world. His 
swift, decisive energy of character ; the valiant rally he 
made again and ever again, starting up fresh from amid 
the wounded, and cheerily storming in anew, was admir- 
able, and shewed a noble fund of natural health amid 
such an element of disease. Somehow one could never 
rightly fancy that he was diseased ; that those fatal ever- 
recurring downbreaks were not almost rather the penal- 
ties paid for exuberance of health, and of faculty for liv- 
ing and working ; criminal forfeitures, incurred by excess 
of self-exertion and such irrepressible over-rapidity of 
movement : and the vague hope was habitual with us, 
that increase of years, as it deadened this over-energy, 
would first make the man secure of life, and a sober 
prosperous worker among his fellows. It was always 
as if with a kind of blame that one heard of his being 
ill again! Poor Sterling; — no man knows another's 
burden : these things were not, and were not to be, in 
the way we had fancied them ! 



Chap. IX. TWO WINTERS. 261 

Summer went along in its usual quiet tenor at Clif- 
ton ; health good, as usual while the warm weather 
lasted, and activity abundant ; the scene as still as the 
busiest could wish. ' You metropolitan signors,' writes 
Sterling to his Father, ' cannot conceive the dulness 
and scantiness of our provincial chronicle.' Here is a 
little excursion to the seaside ; the lady of the family 
being again, — for good reasons, — in a weakly state : 

' To Edward Sterling, Esq., Knightsbridye, London. 
' Portshead, Bristol, Sept. 1st, 1840. 

' My dear Father, — This place is a southern head- 
( land at the mouth of the Avon. Susan, and the Chil- 
- dren too, were all suffering from languor ; and as she 
1 is quite unfit to travel in a carriage, we were obliged 
' to move, if at all, to some place accessible by water ; 
' and this is the nearest where w r e could get the fresher 
1 air of the Bristol Channel. We sent to take a house, 

* for a week ; and came down here in a steamer yester- 
' day morning. It seems likely to do every one good. 
' We have a comfortable house, with eight rather small 

* bedrooms, for which we pay four guineas and a half 
' for the week. We have brought three of our own 
' maids, and leave one to take care of the house at 
< Clifton. 

' A week ago my horse fell with me, but did not 
1 hurt seriously either himself or me : it was, however, 
' rather hard that, as there were six legs to be damaged, 
' the one that did scratch itself should belong to the 
■ part of the machine possessing only two, instead of 
c the quadrupedal portion. I grazed about the size of 
f a halfpenny on my left knee ; and for a couple of days, 



262 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' walked about as if nothing had happened. I found, 
1 however, that the skin was not returning correctly ; 
i and so sent for a doctor : he treated the thing as quite 
' insignificant, but said I must keep my leg quiet for a 
1 few days. It is still not quite healed ; and I lie all 
( day on a sofa, much to my discomposure ; but the 
1 thing is now rapidly disappearing ; and I hope, in a 
' day or two more, I shall be free again. I find I can 
1 do no work, while thus crippled in my leg. The man 
{ in Horace who made verses stems pede in uno had the 
' advantage of me. 

' The Great Western came in last night about eleven, 
1 and has just been making a nourish past our windows ; 
1 looking very grand, with four streamers of bunting, 
1 and one of smoke. Of course I do not yet know 
' whether I have Letters by her, as if so they will 
' have gone to Clifton first. This place is quiet, green 
' and pleasant ; and will suit us very well, if we have 
' good weather, of which there seems every appearance. 

' Milnes spent last Sunday with me at Clifton ; and 
1 was very amusing and cordial. It is impossible for 
i those who know him well not to like him. — I send 
' this to Knightsbridge, not knowing where else to hit 
' you. Love to my Mother. — Your affectionate, 

' John Sterling.' 

The expected ( Letters by the Great Western' are 
from Anthony, now in Canada, doing military duties 
there. The ' Milnes' is our excellent Richard, whom 
all men know, and truly whom none can know well 
without even doing as Sterling says. — In a week the 
family had returned to Clifton ; and Sterling was at his 
poetisings and equitations again. His grand business 



Chap. IX. TWO WINTERS. 268 

was now Poetry ; all effort, outlook and aim exclusively 
directed thither, this good while. 

Of the published Yolume Moxon gave the worst 
tidings ; no man had hailed it with welcome ; unsold it 
lay, under the leaden seal of general neglect ; the pub- 
lic when asked what it thought, had answered hitherto 
by a lazy stare. It shall answer otherwise, thought 
Sterling ; by no means taking that as the final response. 
It was in this same September that he announced to me 
and other friends, under seal of secrecy as usual, the 
completion, or complete first- draught, of " a new Poem 
reaching to two thousand verses." By working ( three 
hours every morning' he had brought it so far. This 
Piece, entitled The Election, of which in due time we 
obtained perusal, and had to give some judgment, proved 
to be in a new vein, — what might be called the mock- 
heroic, or sentimental Hudibrastic, reminding one a 
little, too, of Wieland's Oberon ; — it had touches of 
true drollery combined not ill with grave clear insight ; 
shewed spirit everywhere, and a plainly improved power 
of execution. Our stingy verdict was to the effect, 
" Better, but still not good enough : — why follow that 
" sad f metrical' course, climbing the loose sandhills, 
" when you have a firm path along the plain ?" To 
Sterling himself it remained dubious whether so slight 
a strain, new though it were, would suffice to awaken 
the sleeping public ; and the Piece was thrown away 
and taken up again, at intervals ; and the question, 
Publish or not publish ? lay many months undecided. 

Meanwhile his own feeling was now set more and 
more towards Poetry ; and in spite of symptoms and 
dissuasions, and perverse prognostics of outward wind 
and weather, he was rallying all his force for a down- 



264> JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

right struggle with it; resolute to see which was the 
stronger. It must be owned, he takes his failures in 
the kindliest manner; and goes along, bating no jot of 
heart or hope. Perhaps I should have more admired 
this than I did ! My dissuasions, in that case, might 
have been fainter. But then my sincerity, which was 
all the use of my poor counsel in assent or dissent, 
would have been less. He was now furthermore busy 
with a Tragedy of Strafford, the theme of many failures 
in Tragedy ; planning it industriously in his head ; 
eagerly reading in Whitlocke, Rushworth and the Puri- 
tan Books, to attain a vesture and local habitation for 
it. Faithful assiduous studies, I do believe ; — of which, 
knowing my stubborn realism, and savage humour to- 
wards singing by the Thespian or other methods, he 
told me little, during his visits that summer. 

The advance of the dark weather sent him adrift 
again; to Torquay, for this winter: there, in his old 
Falmouth climate, he hoped to do well; — and did, so 
far as welldoing was readily possible, in that sad wan- 
dering way of life. However, be where he may, he 
tries to work ' two or three hours in the morning,' were 
it even 'with a lamp,' in bed, before the fires are lit; 
and so makes something of it. From abundant Letters 
of his now before me, I glean these two or three small 
glimpses ; sufficient for our purpose at present. The 
general date is ' Tor, near Torquay:' 

Tor, November 30th, 1840 (To Mrs. Charles Fox, 
Falmouth). — ' I reached this place on Thursday; having, 
{ after much hesitation, resolved to come here, at least 
' for the next three weeks, — with some obscure pur- 
' pose of embarking, at the New Year, from Falmouth 



Chap. IX. TWO WINTERS. 265 

e for Malta, and so reaching Naples, which I have not 
' seen. There was also a doubt whether I should not, 
' after Christmas, bring my family here for the first 
' four months of the year. All this, however, is still 
( doubtful. But for certain inhabitants of Falmouth 
e and its neighbourhood, this place would be far more 
' attractive than it. But I have here also friends, whose 
' kindness, like much that I met with last winter, per- 
' petually makes me wonder at the stock of benignity 
' in human nature. A brother of my friend Julius 
e Hare, Marcus by name, a Naval man, and though not 

* a man of letters, full of sense and knowledge, lives 
' here in a beautiful place, with a most agreeable and 
' excellent wife, a daughter of Lord Stanley of Alderley. 
( I had hardly seen them before ; but they are frater- 
f nising with me, in a much better than the Jacobin 
' fashion ; and one only feels ashamed at the enormity 
e of some people's good nature. I am in a little rural 
' sort of lodging ; and as comfortable as a solitary oyster 

* can expect to be.' — 

December 5th (To C. Barton). — ' This place is ex- 
' tremely small, much more so than Falmouth even ; 
' but pretty, cheerful, and very mild in climate. There 
' are a great many villas in and about the little Town, 
' having three or four reception-rooms, eight or ten bed- 
' rooms ; and costing about fifteen hundred or two thou- 
' sand pounds each, and occupied by persons spending a 
' thousand or more pounds a-year. If the Country would 
' acknowledge my merits by the gift of one of these, I 
' could prevail on myself to come and live here ; which 
' would be the best move for my health I could make 
' in England ; but, in the absence of any such expression 
' of public feeling, it would come rather dear.' — 



266 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

December 22d (To Mrs. Fox again). — f By the way, 
c did you ever read a Novel ? If you ever mean to do 
e so hereafter, let it be Miss Martineau's Deerbrook. 
1 It is really very striking ; and parts of it are very 

* true and very beautiful. It is not so true, or so 
1 thoroughly clear and harmonious, among delineations 
( of English middle -class gentility, as Miss Austin's 
' books, especially as Pride and Prejudice, which I think 
1 exquisite ; but it is worth reading. The Hour and the 
1 Man is eloquent, but an absurd exaggeration. — I hold 
' out so valorously against this Scandinavian weather, 
' that I deserve to be ranked with Odin and Thor, and 
c fancy I may go to live at Clifton or Drontheim. Have 
( you had the same icy desolation as prevails here V 

December 28th (To W. Conyngham, Esq.). — ' Look- 
' ing back to him,' (a deceased Uncle, father of his cor- 
respondent), ' as I now very often do, I feel strongly, 
' what the loss of other friends has also impressed on 
( me, how much Death deepens our affection ; and shar- 
' pens our regret for whatever has been even slightly 
' amiss in our conduct towards those who are gone. 
' What trifles then swell into painful importance ; how 
' we believe that, could the past be recalled, life would 
' present no worthier, happier task, than that of so 
( bearing ourselves towards those we love, that we might 
Q ever after find nothing but melodious tranquillity 

* breathing about their graves ! Yet, too often, I feel 

* the difficulty of always practising such mild wisdom 
( towards those who are still left me. — You will wonder 
' less at my rambling off in this way, when I tell you 
' that my little lodging is close to a picturesque old 
1 Church and Churchyard, where, every day, I brush 
' past a tombstone, recording that an Italian, of Man- 



Chap. IX. TWO WINTERS. 267 

' ferrato, has buried there a girl of sixteen, his only 
( daughter : " L'unica speranza di mia vita.'' — -No doubt, 
' as you say, our Mechanical Age is necessary as a pas- 
1 sage to something better ; but, at least, do not let us 
6 go back.' — 

At the New-year time, feeling unusually well, he 
returns to Clifton. His plans, of course, were ever 
fluctuating; his movements were swift and uncertain. 
Alas, his whole life, especially his winter-life, had to 
be built as if on wavering drift-sand; nothing certain 
in it, except if possible the ' two or three hours of work' 
snatched from the general whirlpool of the dubious four- 
and-twenty ! 

Clifton, January 10th, 1841 (To Dr. Carlyle). — '! 
1 stood the sharp frost at Torquay with such entire 
1 impunity, that at last I took courage, and resolved to 
1 return home. I have been here a week, in extreme 
' cold ; and have suffered not at all ; so that I hope, 
' with care I may prosper in spite of medical prognos- 
' tics, — if you permit such profane language. I am 
' even able to work a good deal ; and write for some 
( hours every morning, by dint of getting up early, 
' which an Arnott-stove in my study enables me to 
' do.' — But at Clifton he cannot continue. Again, before 
long, the rude weather has driven him Southward; the 
spring finds him in his former haunts ; doubtful as ever 
what to decide upon for the future ; but tending evi- 
dently towards a new change of residence for household 
and self: 

Penzance, April 19th, 1841 (To W. Conyngham, 
Esq.). — ' My little Boy and I have been wandering 
1 about between Torquay and this place ; and latterly 
c have had my Father for a few days with us, — he left 



268 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

us yesterday. In all probability I shall endeavour to 
settle either at Torquay, at Falmouth, or here ; as it 
is pretty clear that I cannot stand the sharp air of 
Clifton, and still less the London east winds. Pen- 
zance is, on the whole, a pleasant-looking, cheerful 
place ; with a delightful mildness of air, and a great 
appearance of comfort among the people : the view of 
Mount's Bay is certainly a very noble one. Torquay 
would suit the health of my Wife and Children better ; 
or else I should be glad to live here always, London 
and its neighbourhood being impracticable.' — Such 
was his second wandering winter ; enough to render the 
prospect of a third at Clifton very uninviting. 

With the Falmouth friends, young and old, his 
intercourse had meanwhile continued cordial and fre- 
quent. The omens were pointing towards that region 
as his next place of abode. Accordingly, in few weeks 
hence, in the June of this Summer 1841, his dubita- 
tions and inquirings are again ended for a time ; he has 
fixed upon a house in Falmouth, and removed thither ; 
bidding Clifton, and the regretful Clifton friends, a 
kind farewell. This was the fifth change of place for 
his family since Bayswater ; the fifth, and to one chief 
member of it the last. Mrs. Sterling had brought him 
a new child in October last ; and went hopefully to Fal- 
mouth, dreading other than what befel there. 



CHAPTER X. 



FALMOUTH : POEMS. 



At Falmouth^ as usual, he was soon at home in his new 
environment ; resumed his labours ; had his new small 
circle of acquaintance, the ready and constant centre of 
which was the Fox family, with whom he lived on an 
altogether intimate, honoured and beloved footing; real- 
ising his best anticipations in that respect, which doubt- 
less were among his first inducements to settle in this 
new place. Open cheery heights, rather bare of wood ; 
fresh Southwestern breezes ; a brisk laughing sea, swept 
by industrious sails, and the nets of a most stalwart, 
wholesome, frank and interesting population : the clean 
little fishing, trading and packet Town ; hanging on its 
slope towards the Eastern sun, close on the waters of 
its basin and intricate bay, — with the miniature Pen- 
dennis Castle seaward on the right, the miniature St. 
Mawes landward to left, and the mining world and the 
farming world open boundlessly to the rear: — all this 
made a pleasant outlook and environment. And in all 
this, as in the other new elements of his position, Ster- 
ling, open beyond most men to the worth of things 
about him, took his frank share. From the first, he 
had liked the general aspect of the population, and 



270 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

their healthy, lively ways ; not to speak of the special 
friendships he had formed there, which shed a charm 
over them all. * Men of strong character, clear heads 
' and genuine goodness,' writes he, ' are by no means 
' wanting.' And long after : f The common people 

* here dress better than in most parts of England ; 
{ and on Sundays, if the weather be at all fine, their 
{ appearance is very pleasant. One sees them all round 
' the Town, especially towards Pendennis Castle, stream- 
1 ing in a succession of little groups, and seeming for 

* the most part really and quietly happy.' On the 
whole he reckoned himself lucky ; and, so far as locality 
went, found this a handsome shelter for the next two 
years of his life. Two years, and not without an inter- 
ruption ; that was all. Here we have no continuing 
city; he less than any of us! One other flight for 
shelter ; and then it is ended, and he has found an in- 
expugnable refuge. Let us trace his remote footsteps, 
as we have opportunity : 

Falmouth, June 28th, 1841 (To Dr. Simmons, Clifton). 
— ' Newman writes to me that he is gone to the Rhine. 
f I wish I were ! And yet the only " wish" at the bot- 
' torn of my heart, is to be able to work vigorously in 

* my own way anywhere, were it in some Circle of 
f Dante's Inferno. This, however, is the secret of my 
' soul, which I disclose only to a few.' 

Falmouth, July 6th, 1841 (To his Mother). — ' I have 
' at last my own study made comfortable ; the carpet 
' being now laid down, and most of my appurtenances 
' in tolerable order. By and by I shall, unless stopped 
( by illness, get myself together, and begin living an 
e orderly life and doing my daily task. I have swung 
( a cot in my dressing-room ; partly as a convenience 






Chap. X. FALMOUTH : POEMS. 271 

' for myself, partly as a sort of memorial of my poor 
' Uncle, in whose cot in his dressing-room at Lisworney 
f I rememher to have slept when a child. I have put 
' a good large bookcase in my drawing-room, and all the 
' rest of my books fit very well into the study.' 

Same day {To myself). — ' No books have come in my 
' way but Emerson's, which I value full as much as 
' you, though as yet I have read only some corners of 
' it. We have had an Election here, of the usual stamp ; 
' to me a droll " realised Ideal," after my late metrical 
' adventures in that line. But the oddest sign of the 
f Times I know, is a cheap Translation of Strauss's Leben 
( Jesu, now publishing in numbers, and said to be cir- 
' culating far and wide. What does, — or rather, what 
' does not, — this portend V — 

With the Poem called The Election, here alluded 
to, which had been more than once revised and recon- 
sidered, he was still under some hesitations ; but at last 
had wellnigh resolved, as from the first it was clear he 
would do, on publishing it. This occupied some occa- 
sional portion of his thoughts. But his grand private 
affair, I believe, was now Strafford ; to which, or to its 
adjuncts, all working hours were devoted. Sterling's 
notions of Tragedy are high enough. This is what he 
writes once, in reference to his own task in these weeks : 
' Few, I fancy, know hqw much harder it is to write a 
' Tragedy, than to realise or be one. Every man has 
' in his heart and lot, if he pleases, and too many whe- 
( ther they please or no, all the woes of CEdipus and 
f Antigone. But it takes the One, the Sophocles of a 
1 thousand years, to utter these in the full depth and 
( harmony of creative song. Curious, by the way, how 



212 



JOHN STERLING. 



Part II. 



that Dramatic Form of the old Greek, with only some 
superficial changes, remains a law not only for the 
stage, but for the thoughts of all Poets ; and what a 
charm it has even for the reader who never saw a 
theatre. The Greek Plays and Shakspere have in- 
terested a hundred as books, for one who has seen 
their writings acted. How lightly does the mere 
clown, the idle school -girl, build a private theatre in 
the fancy, and laugh or weep with Falstaff and Mac- 
beth ; with how entire an oblivion of the artificial 
nature of the whole contrivance, which thus compels 
them to be their own architects, machinists, scene- 
painters and actors ! In fact, the artifice succeeds, — 
becomes grounded in the substance of the soul : and 
every one loves to feel how he is thus brought face to 
face with the brave, the fair, the woful and the great 
of all past ages ; looks into their eyes, and feels the 
beatings of their hearts ; and reads, over the shoulder, 
the secret written tablets of the busiest and the largest 
brains ; while the Juggler, by whose cunning the whole 
strange beautiful absurdity is set in motion, keeps him- 
self hidden ; sings loud with a mouth unmoving as that 
of a statue, and makes the human race cheat itself 
unanimously and delightfully by the illusion that he 
preordains ; while as an obscure Fate, he sits invisible, 
and hardly lets his being be divined by those who can- 
not flee him. The Lyric Art is childish, and the Epic 
barbarous, compared to this. But of the true and per- 
fect Drama it may be said, as of even higher mys- 
teries, "Who is sufficient for these things?' — On this 
Tragedy of Strafford, writing it and again writing it, 
studying for it, and bending himself with his whole 
strength to do his best on it, he expended many strenu- 



Chap. X. FALMOUTH : POEMS. 213 

ous months, — f above a year of his life,' as he com- 
putes, in all. 

For the rest, what Falmouth has to give him he is 
willing to take, and mingles freely in it. In Hare's 
Collection there is given a Lecture which he read in 
Autumn 1841 (Mr. Hare says * 1842,' by mistake), to a 
certain Public Institution in the place, — of which more 
anon : — a piece interesting in this, if not much in any 
other respect. Doubtless his friends the Foxes were 
at the heart of that lecturing enterprise, and had urged 
and solicited him. Something like proficiency in cer- 
tain branches of science, as I have understood, charac- 
terised one or more of this estimable family; love of 
knowledge, taste for art, wish to consort with wisdom 
and wise men, were the tendencies of all : to opulent 
means superadd the Quaker beneficence, Quaker purity 
and reverence, there is a circle in which wise men also 
may love to be. Sterling made acquaintance here with 
whatever of notable in worthy persons or things might 
be afoot in those parts ; and was led thereby, now and 
then, into pleasant reunions, in new circles of activity, 
which might otherwise have continued foreign to him. 
The good Calvert, too, was now here ; and intended to 
remain ; — which he mostly did henceforth, lodging in 
Sterling's neighbourhood, so long as lodging in this 
world was permitted him. Still good and clear and 
cheerful ; still a lively comrade, within doors or with- 
out, — a diligent rider always, — though now wearing 
visibly weaker, and less able to exert himself. 

Among those accidental Falmouth reunions, perhaps 
the notablest for Sterling occurred in this his first sea- 
son. There is in Falmouth an Association called the 
Cornwall Polytechnic Society, established about twenty 



274) JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

years ago, and supported by the wealthy people of the 
Town and neighbourhood, for the encouragement of the 
Arts in that region : it has its Library, its Museum, 
some kind of Annual Exhibition withal ; gives prizes, 
publishes reports : the main patrons, I believe, are Sir 
Charles Lemon, a well-known country gentleman of 
those parts, and the Messrs. Fox. To this, so far as 
he liked to go in it, Sterling was sure to be introduced 
and solicited. The Polytechnic Meeting of 1841 was un- 
usually distinguished; and Sterling's part in it formed 
one of the pleasant occurrences for him in Falmouth. 
It was here that, among other profitable as well as 
pleasant things, he made acquaintance with Professor 
Owen (an event of which I too had my benefit in due 
time, and still have) : the bigger assemblage called 
British Association, which met at Plymouth this year, 
having now just finished its affairs there, Owen and 
other distinguished persons had taken Falmouth in their 
route from it. Sterling's account of this Polytechnic 
gala still remains, — in three Letters to his Father, 
which, omitting the extraneous portions, I will give in 
one, — as a piece worth reading among those still-life 
pictures : 

( To Edward Sterling, Esq., Knightsbridge, London. 

6 Falmouth, Aug. 10th, 1841. 

' My dear Father, — I was not well for a day or 
' two after you went ; and since, I have been busy about 
f an annual show of the Polytechnic Society here, in 
* which my friends take much interest, and for which I 
( have been acting as one of the judges in the depart- 
' ment of the Fine Arts, and have written a little Re- 



Chap. X. FALMOUTH : POEMS. 275 

port for them. As I have not said that Falmouth is 
as eminent as Athens or Florence, perhaps^ the Com- 
mittee will not adopt my statement. But if they do, 
it will be of some use ; for I have hinted, as delicately 
as possible, that people should not paint historical pic- 
tures before they have the power of drawing a decent 
outline of a pig or a cabbage. I saw Sir Charles Le- 
mon yesterday, who was kind as well as civil in his 
manner ; and promises to be a pleasant neighbour. 
There are several of the British Association heroes 
here; but not Whewell, or any one whom I know.' 

August \lth. — f At the Polytechnic Meeting here we 
had several very eminent men ; among others, Professor 
Owen, said to be the first of comparative anatomists, and 
Conybeare the geologist. Both of these gave evening 
Lectures ; and after Conybeare's, at which I happened 
to be present, I said I would, if they chose, make 
some remarks on the Busts, which happened to be 
standing there, intended for prizes in the department 
of the Fine Arts. They agreed gladly. The heads 
were Homer, Pericles, Augustus, Dante and Michael 
Angelo. I got into the boxlike platform, with these 
on a shelf before me ; and began a talk, which must 
have lasted some three quarters of an hour ; describing 
partly the characters and circumstances of the men, 
illustrated by anecdotes and compared with their phy- 
siognomies, and partly the several styles of sculpture 
exhibited in the Casts, referring these to what I con- 
sidered the true principles of the Art. The subject 
was one that interests me, and I got on in famous 
style ; and had both pit and galleries all applauding, 
in a way that had had no precedent during any other 
part of the meeting. Conybeare paid me high com- 



276 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

'pliments; Owen looked much pleased, — an honour 
* well purchased by a year's hard work; — and every- 
' body, in short, seemed delighted. Susan was not 
1 there, and I had nothing to make me nervous ; so that 
' I worked away freely, and got vigorously over the 
e ground. After so many years' disuse of rhetoric, it 
i was a pleasant surprise to myself to find that I could 
( still handle the old weapons without awkwardness. 
' More by good luck than good guidance, it has done 
i my health no harm. I have been at Sir Charles Le- 
i mon's, though only to pay a morning visit, having 
' declined to stay there or dine, the hours not suiting 
' me. They were very civil. The person I saw most 
' of was his sister, Lady Dunstanville ; a pleasant, well- 
e informed and well-bred woman. He seems a most 
' amiable, kindly man, of fair good sense and cultivated 
' tastes. — I had a letter to-day from my Mother' in 
Scotland ; ' who says she sent you one which you were 
' to forward me ; which I hope soon to have.' 

August 29th. — ' I returned yesterday from Carclew, 
i Sir C. Lemon's fine place about five miles off; where 
' I had been staying a couple of days, with apparently 
4 the heartiest welcome. Susan was asked ; but wanting 
1 a Governess, could not leave home. 

' Sir Charles is a widower (his Wife was sister to 
' Lord Ilchester) without children ; but had a niece 
( staying with him, and his sister Lady Dunstanville, a 
' pleasant and very civil woman. There were also Mr. 
' Bunbury, eldest son of Sir Henry Bunbury, a man of 
' much cultivation and strong talents ; Mr. Fox Talbot, 
( son I think of another Ilchester lady, and brother of 
' the Talbot of Wales, but himself a man of large for- 
' tune, and known for photogenic and other scientific 



Chap. X. FALMOUTH : POEMS. 277 

' plans of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. He 
c also is a man of known ability, but chiefly employed 
i in that peculiar department. Item Professors Lloyd 
' and Owen : the former, of Dublin, son of the late 
' Provost, I had seen before and knew ; a great mathe- 
' matician and optician, and a discoverer in those mat- 
e ters ; with a clever little Wife, who has a great deal 
' of knowledge, quite free from pretension. Owen is a 
( first-rate comparative anatomist, they say the greatest 
6 since Cuvier ; lives in London, and lectures there. 
' On the whole, he interested me more than any of them, 
' — by an apparent force and downrightness of mind, 
' combined with much simplicity and frankness. 

* Nothing could be pleasanter and easier than the 
1 habits of life, with what to me was a very unusual 
' degree of luxury, though probably nothing but what 
' is common among people of large fortune. The library 
( and pictures are nothing extraordinary. The general 
i tone of good nature, good sense and quiet freedom, 
( was what struck me most ; and I think besides this 
' there was a disposition to be cordially courteous to- 

* wards me.' — 

' T took Edward a ride of two hours yesterday on 
' Calvert's pony, and he is improving fast in horseman- 
1 ship. The school appears to answer very well. We 

* shall have the Governess in a day or two, which will be 
' a great satisfaction. Will you send my Mother this 
' scribble with my love ; and believe me, — Your afFec- 
' tionate son, 

' John Sterling.' 

One other little event dwells with me, out of those 
Falmouth times, exact date now forgotten ; a pleasant 



278 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

little matter, in which Sterling, and principally the 
Misses Fox, bright cheery young creatures, were con- 
cerned ; which, for the sake of its human interest, is 
worth mention. In a certain Cornish mine, said the 
Newspapers duly specifying it,* two miners deep down 
in the shaft were engaged putting in a shot for blasting : 
they had completed their affair, and were about to give 
the signal for being hoisted up, — one at a time was all 
their coadjutor at the top could manage, and the second 
was to kindle the match, and then mount with all speed. 
Now it chanced while they were both still below, one 
of them thought the match too long ; tried to break it 
shorter, took a couple of stones, a flat and a sharp, to 
cut it shorter ; did cut it of the due length, but, hor- 
rible to relate, kindled it at the same time, and both 
were still below ! Both shouted vehemently to the 
coadjutor at the windlass, both sprang at the basket; 
the windlass man could not move it with them both. 
Here was a moment for poor miner Jack and miner 
Will ! Instant horrible death hangs over both, — when 
Will generously resigns himself: " Go aloft, Jack," and 
sits down ; " away ; in one minute I shall be in Hea- 
ven ! " Jack bounds aloft, the explosion instantly fol- 
lows, bruises his face as he looks over ; he is safe above 
ground : and poor Will ? Descending eagerly they find 
Will too, as if by miracle, buried under rocks which 
had arched themselves over him, and little injured : he 
too is brought up safe, and all ends joyfully, say the 
Newspapers. 

Such a piece of manful promptitude, and salutary 
human heroism, was worth investigating. It was inves- 
tigated ; found to be accurate to the letter, — with this 
addition and explanation, that Will, an honest, ignorant 



Chap. X. FALMOUTH : POEMS. 279 

good man, entirely given up to Methodism, had been per- 
fect in the " faith of assurance," certain that he should 
get to Heaven if he died, certain that Jack would not, 
which had been the ground of his decision in that great 
moment ; — for the rest, that he much wished to learn 
reading and writing, and find some way of life above 
ground instead of below. By aid of the Misses Fox 
and the rest of that family, a subscription (modest Anti- 
Hudson testimonial) was raised to this Methodist hero : 
he emerged into daylight with fifty pounds in his pocket ; 
did strenuously try, for certain months, to learn reading 
and writing; found he could not learn those arts or 
either of them ; took his money and bought cows with 
it, wedding at the same time some religious likely milk- 
maid; and is, last time I heard of him, a prosperous 
modest dairyman, thankful for the upper light and 
safety from the wrath to come. Sterling had some 
hand in this affair : but, as I said, it was the two young 
ladies of the family that mainly did it. 

In the end of 1841, after many hesitations and re- 
visals, The Election came out : a tiny Duodecimo with- 
out name attached;* again inquiring of the public what 
its suffrage was ; again to little purpose. My vote had 
never been loud for this step, but neither was it quite 
adverse ; and now, in readiug the poor little Poem over 
again, after ten years' space, I find it, with a touching 
mixture of pleasure and repentance, considerably better 
than it then seemed to me. My encouragement, if not 
to print this Poem, yet to proceed with Poetry, since 
there was such a resolution for it, might have been a 
little more decided ! 

* The Election : a Poem, in Seven Books. London, Murray, 1841. 



280 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

This is a small Piece, but aims at containing great 
things ; a multum inparvo after its sort ; and is executed 
here and there with undeniable success. The style is 
free and flowing, the rhyme dances along with a certain 
joyful triumph ; everything of due brevity withal. That 
mixture of mockery on the surface, which finely relieves 
the real earnestness within, and flavours even what is 
not very earnest and might even be insipid otherwise, is 
not ill managed : an amalgam difficult to effect well in 
writing; nay impossible in writing, — unless it stand 
already done and effected, as a general fact, in the 
writer's mind and character ; which will betoken a cer- 
tain ripeness there. 

As I said, great things are intended in this little 

Piece ; the motto itself foreshadowing them : 

6 Fluellen. Ancient Pistol, I do partly understand your meaning. 
' Pistol. Why then rejoice therefor.' 

A stupid commonplace English Borough has lost its 
Member suddenly, by apoplexy or otherwise ; resolves, 
in the usual explosive temper of mind, to replace him 
by one of two others : whereupon strange stirring up 
of rival-attorney and other human interests and cata- 
strophes. ( Frank Vane' (Sterling himself), and f Peter 
Mogg' the pattern English blockhead of elections: 
these are the candidates. There are, of course, fierce 
rival attorneys ; electors of all creeds and complexions 
to be canvassed : a poor stupid Borough thrown all into 
red or white heat ; into blazing paroxysms of activity 
and enthusiasm, which render the inner life of it (and 
of England and the world through it) luminously trans- 
parent, so to speak; — of which opportunity our friend 
and his ( Muse ' take dexterous advantage, to delineate 
the same. His pictures are uncommonly good ; brief, 



Chap. X. FALMOUTH : POEMS. 281 

joyous, sometimes conclusively true : in rigorously com- 
pressed shape, all is merry freshness and exuberance : 
we have leafy summer embowering red bricks and small 
human interests, presented as in glowing miniature ; a 
mock-heroic action fitly interwoven ; — and many a clear 
glance is carelessly given into the deepest things by the 
way. Very happy also is the little love-episode ; and 
the absorption of all the interest into that, on the part 
of Frank Vane and of us, when once this gallant Frank, 
— having fairly from his barrelhead stated his own (and 
John Sterling's) views on the aspects of the world, and 
of course having quite broken down with his attorney 
and his public, — handsomely, by stratagem, gallops off 
with the fair Anne ; and leaves free field to Mogg, free 
field to the Hippopotamus if it like. This portrait of 
Mogg may be considered to have merit : 

' Though short of days, how large the mind of man ; 
A godlike force enclosed within a span ! 
To climb the skies we spum our nature's clog, 
And toil as Titans to elect a Mogg. 

' And who was Mogg ? O Muse ! the man declare, 
How excellent his worth, his parts how rare. 
A younger son, he learnt in Oxford's halls 
The spheral harmonies of billiard-balls, 
Drank, hunted, drove, and hid from Virtue's frown 
His venial follies in Decorum's gown. 
Too wise to doubt on insufficient cause, 
He signed old Cranmer's lore without a pause; 
And knew that logic's cunning rules are taught 
To guard our creed, and not invigorate thought, — 
As those bronze steeds at Venice, kept for pride, 
Adorn a Town where not one man can ride. 

4 From Isis sent with all her loud acclaims, 
The Laws he studied on the banks of Thames. 
Park, race and play, in his capacious plan, 
Combined with Coke to form the finished man, 



282 JOHN STERLING. Pari II. 

Until the wig's ambrosial influence shed 
Its last full glories on the lawyer's head. 

' But vain are mortal schemes. The eldest son 
At Harrier Hall had scarce his stud begun, 
When Death's pale courser took the Squire away 
To lands where never dawns a hunting-day : 
And so, while Thomas vanished 'mid the fog, 
Bright rose the star of Peter Mogg.'* 

And this little picture, in a quite opposite way : 

c Now, in her chamber all alone, the maid 
Her polished limbs and shoulders disarrayed; 
One little taper gave the only light, 
One little mirror caught so dear a sight; 
'Mid hangings dusk and shadows wide she stood, 
Like some pale Nymph in dark-leafed solitude 
Of rocks and gloomy waters all alone, 
Where sunshine scarcely breaks on stump or stone 
To scare the dreamy vision. Thus did she, 
A star in deepest night, intent but free, 
Gleam through the eyeless darkness, heeding not 
Her beauty's praise, but musing o'er her lot. 
' Her garments one by one she laid aside, 
And then her knotted hair's long locks untied 
With careless hand, and down her cheeks they fell, 
And o'er her maiden bosom's blue-veined swell. 
The right-hand fingers played amidst her hair, 
And with her reverie wandered here and there : 
The other hand sustained the only dress 
That now but half concealed her loveliness; 
And pausing, aimlessly she stood and thought, 
In virgin beauty by no fear distraught,' 

Manifold, and beautiful of their sort, are Anne's mus- 
ings, in this interesting attitude, in the summer midnight, 
in the crisis of her destiny now near ; — at last : 

6 But Anne, at last her mute devotions o'er, 
Perceived the fact she had forgot before 
Of her too shocking nudity ; and shame 
Flushed from her heart o'er all the snowy frame : 

* Pp. 7, 8. 






Chap. X. FALMOUTH : POEMS. 283 

And, struck from top to toe with burning dread, 
She blew the light out, and escaped to bed.'* 

— which also is a very pretty movement. 

It must be owned withal, the Piece is crude in parts, 
and far enough from perfect. Our good painter has yet 
several things to learn, and to unlearn. His brush is 
not always of the finest ; and dashes about, sometimes, 
in a recognisably sprawling way : but it hits many a 
feature with decisive accuracy and felicity ; and on the 
palette, as usual, lie the richest colours. A grand merit, 
too, is the brevity of everything ; by no means a spon- 
taneous, or quite common merit with Sterling. 

This new poetic Duodecimo, as the last had done 
and as the next also did, met with little or no recogni- 
tion from the world : which was not very inexcusable 
on the world's part ; though many a poem with far less 
proof of merit than this offers, has run, when the acci- 
dents favoured it, through its tens of editions, and raised 
the writer to the demigods for a year or two, if not 
longer. Such as it is, we may take it as marking, in its 
small way, in a noticed or unnoticed manner, a new 
height arrived at by Sterling in his Poetic course ; and 
almost as vindicating the determination he had formed 
to keep climbing by that method. Poor Poem, or ra- 
ther Promise of a Poem ! In Sterling's brave struggle, 
this little Election is the highest point he fairly lived to 
see attained, and openly demonstrated in print. His 
next public adventure in this kind was of inferior worth ; 
and a third, which had perhaps intrinsically gone much 
higher than any of its antecessors, was cut off as a frag- 
ment, and has not hitherto been published. Steady 

* Pp. 89-93. 



284 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

courage is needed on the Poetic course, as on all 
courses ! — 

Shortly after this Publication, in the beginning of 
1842, poor Calvert, long a hopeless sufferer, was deliver- 
ed by death : Sterling's faithful fellow pilgrim could no 
more attend him in his wayfarings through this world. 
The weary and heavyladen man had borne his burden 
well. Sterling says of him to Hare : e Since I wrote 
' last, I have lost Calvert ; the man with whom, of all 
' others, I have been during late years the most inti- 
f mate. Simplicity, benevolence, practical good sense 
' and moral earnestness were his great unfailing charac- 
' teristics ; and no man, I believe, ever possessed them 
{ more entirely. His illness had latterly so prostrated 
c him, both in mind and body, that those who most 
f loved him were most anxious for his departure.' 
There was something touching in this exit ; in the 
quenching of so kind and bright a little life under the 
dark billows of death. To me he left a curious old 
Print of James Nayler the Quaker, which I still affec 
tionately preserve. 

Sterling, from this greater distance, came perhaps 
rather seldomer to London ; but we saw him still at mo- 
derate intervals ; and, through his family here and other 
direct and indirect channels, were kept in lively commu- 
nication with him. Literature was still his constant pur- 
suit ; and, with encouragement or without, Poetic compo- 
sition his chosen department therein. On the ill success 
of The Election, or any ill success with the world, no- 
body ever heard him utter the least murmur ; condolence 
upon that or any such subject might have been a ques- 
tionable operation, by no means called for ! Nay my 




Chap. X. FALMOUTH : POEMS. 285 

own approval, higher than this of the world, had been 
languid, by no means enthusiastic. But our valiant 
friend took all quietly; and was not to be repulsed 
from his Poetics either by the world's coldness or by 
mine; he laboured at his Strafford; — determined to 
labour, in all ways, till he felt the end of his tether in 
this direction. 

He sometimes spoke, with a certain zeal, of my 
starting a Periodical : Why not lift up some kind of 
war-flag against the obese platitudes, and sickly super- 
stitious aperies and impostures of the time ? But I had 
to answer, " Who will join it, my friend ?." He seemed 
to say, " I, for one ;" and there was occasionally a tran- 
sient temptation in the thought, but transient only. No 
fighting regiment, with the smallest attempt towards 
drill, cooperation, commissariat, or the like unspeakable 
advantages, could be raised in Sterling's time or mine ; 
which truly, to honest fighters, is a rather grievous want. 
A grievous, but not quite a fatal one. For, failing 
this, failing all things and all men, there remains the . 
solitary battle (and were it by the poorest weapon, the 
tongue only, or were it even by wise abstinence and . 
silence and without any weapon), such as each man for 
himself can wage while he has life : an indubitable and 
infinitely comfortable fact for every man ! Said battle 
shaped itself for Sterling, as we have long since seen, 
chiefly in the poetic form, in the singing or hymning 
rather than the speaking form ; and in that he was 
cheerfully assiduous according to his light. The unfor- 
tunate Strafford is far on towards completion ; a Cosur- 
de-Lion, of which we shall hear farther, ' Coeur -de-Lion, 
greatly the best of all his Poems,' unluckily not com- 
pleted, and still unpublished, already hangs in the wind. 



JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

His Letters to friends continue copious ; and he has, 
as always, a loyally interested eye on whatsoever of not- 
able is passing in the world. Especially on whatsoever 
indicates to him the spiritual condition of the world. 
Of ' Strauss,' in English or in German, we now hear 
nothing more ; of Church matters, and that only to 
special correspondents, less and less. Strauss, whom he 
used to mention, had interested him only as a sign of 
the times ; in which sense alone do we find, for a year 
or two back, any notice of the Church or its affairs 
by Sterling ; and at last even this as good as ceases : 
'\ Adieu, O Church ; thy road is that way, mine is this : 
" in God's name, adieu !" ' What we are going to, 9 
says he once, ' is abundantly obscure ; but what all men 
' are going from, is very plain.' — Sifted out of many 
pages, not of sufficient interest, here are one or two 
miscellaneous sentences, about the date we are now 
arrived at : 

Falmouth, 3d November, 1841 (To Dr. Simmons). — 
' Yesterday was my Wedding-day : eleven years of mar- 
' riage ; and on the whole my verdict is clear for matri- 
{ mony. I solemnised the day by reading John Gilpin 
' to the children, who with their Mother are all pretty 
* well.' * * * ' There is a trick of sham Elizabethan 
1 writing now prevalent, that looks plausible, but in most 
f cases means nothing at all. Darley has real (lyrical) 
' genius ; Taylor, wonderful sense, clearness and weight 
' of purpose; Tennyson, a rich and exquisite fancy. 
6 All the other men of our tiny generation that I know 
' of are, in Poetry, either feeble or fraudulent. I know 
e nothing of the Reviewer you ask about.' 

December Wth (To his Mother). — ( I have seen no 
' new books ; but am reading your last. I got hold of 



Chap. X. FALMOUTH I POEMS. 287 

e the two first Numbers of the Hoggarty Diamond ; and 
e read them with extreme delight. What is there bet- 
( ter in Fielding or Goldsmith ? The man is a true 

* genius ; and, with quiet and comfort, might produce 
e masterpieces that would last as long as any we have, 
' and delight millions of unborn readers. There is more 
' truth and nature in one of these papers than in all 

1 's Novels together.' — Thackeray, always a close 

friend of the Sterling house, will observe that this is 
dated 1841, not 1851, and have his own reflections on 
the matter ! 

December 17 th (To the same). — 'I am not much 

' surprised at Lady 's views of Coleridge's little 

' Book on Inspiration.'' — 'Great part of the obscurity 
' of the Letters arises from his anxiety to avoid the 
' difficulties and absurdities of the common views, and 
' his panic terror of saying anything that bishops and 
1 good people would disapprove. He paid a heavy 
f price, viz. all his own candour and simplicity, in hope 
1 of gaining the favour of persons like Lady ; 

* and you see what his reward is ! A good lesson for 
< us all.' 

February 1st, 1842 (To the same). — { English Toryism 
( has, even in my eyes, about as much to say for itself 
' as any other form of doctrine ; but Irish Toryism is 
e the downright proclamation of brutal injustice, and 
e all in the name of God and the Bible ! It is almost 
' enough to make one turn Mahometan, but for the fear 
f of the four wives.' 

March 12th, 1842 (To his Father). — < * * Impor- 
' tant to me as these matters are, it almost seems as if 
' there were something unfeeling in writing of them, 

* under the pressure of such news as ours from India. 



JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

6 If the Cabool Troops have perished, England has not 
' received such a blow from an enemy, nor anything 
f approaching it, since Buckingham's Expedition to the 
' Isle of Rhe. Walcheren destroyed us by climate ; and 
' Corunna, with all its loss, had much of glory. But 
1 here we are dismally injured by mere Barbarians, in a 
1 War on our part shamefully unjust as well as foolish : 
' a combination of disgrace and calamity that would 
1 have shocked Augustus even more than the defeat of 
6 Varus. One of the four Officers with Macnaghten was 
' George Lawrence, a brother-in-law of Nat Barton; a 
i distinguished man, and the father of five totally un- 
1 provided children. He is a prisoner, if not since mur- 
1 dered. Macnaghten I do not pity ; he was the prime 
1 author of the whole mad War. But Burnes ; and the 
' women ; and our regiments ! India, however, I feel 
( sure, is safe.' 

So roll the months at Falmouth ; such is the ticking 
of the great World-Horologe as heard there by a good 
ear. * I willingly add 5 (so ends he, once), ' that I 
1 lately found somewhere this fragment of an Arab's 
6 love-song : " O Ghalia ! If my father were a jackass, 
( I would sell him to purchase Ghalia!" A beautiful 
' parallel to the French, " Avec cette sauce on mangerait 
' son pere." ' 



CHAPTER XL 

NAPLES : POEMS. 

In the bleak weather of this spring 1842, he was again 
abroad for a little while ; partly from necessity, or at 
least utility; and partly, as I guess, because the cir- 
cumstances favoured, and he could with a good coun- 
tenance indulge a little wish he had long had. In the 
Italian Tour, which ended suddenly by Mrs. Sterling's 
illness recalling him, he had missed Naples ; a loss which 
he always thought to be considerable ; and which, from 
time to time, he had formed little projects, failures 
hitherto, for supplying. The rigours of spring were 
always dangerous to him in England, and it was always 
of advantage to get out of them : and then the sight of 
Naples, too ; this, always a thing to be done some day, 
was now possible. Enough, with the real or imaginary 
hope of bettering himself in health, and the certain one 
of seeing Naples, and catching a glance of Italy again, 
he now made a run thither. It was not long after Cal- 
vert's death. The Tragedy of Strafford lay finished in 
his desk. Several things, sad and bright, were finished. 
A little intermezzo of ramble was not unadvisable. 

His tour by water and by land was brief and rapid 
enough; hardly above two months in all. Of which 
the following Letters will, with some abridgment, give 
us what details are needful : 

u 



290 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' To Charles Barton, Esq., Leamington. 

' Falmouth, March 25th, 1842. 

f My dear Charles, — My attempts to shoot you 
e flying with my paper pellets turned out very ill. I 
e hope young ladies succeed better when they happen 
' to make appointments with you. Even now, I hardly 
1 know whether you have received a Letter I wrote on 
( Sunday last, and addressed to The Cavendish. I sent 
f it thither by Susan's advice. 

' In this missive, — happily for us both, it did not 
' contain a hundred -pound note or any trifle of that 
' kind, — I informed you that I was compelled to plan 
' an expedition towards the South Pole, stopping, how- 
6 ever, in the Mediterranean ; and that I designed leav- 
f ing this on Monday next for Cadiz or Gibraltar, and 
1 then going on to Malta, whence Italy and Sicily would 
6 be accessible. Of course your company would be a 
* great pleasure, if it were possible for you to join me. 
e The delay in hearing from you, through no fault of 
f yours, has naturally put me out a little ; but, on the 
1 whole, my plan still holds, and I shall leave this on 
' Monday for Gibraltar, where the Great Liverpool will 
f catch me, and carry me to Malta. The Great Liver- 
'pool leaves Southampton on the 1st April, and Fal- 
' mouth on the 2d ; and will reach Gibraltar in from 
{ four to five days. 

' Now, if you should be able and disposed to join 
' me, you have only to embark in that sumptuous tea- 
' kettle, and pick me up under the guns of the Rock. 
6 We could then cruise on to Malta, Sicily, Naples, 
' Rome, &c. a discretion. It is just possible, though 
( extremely improbable, that my steamer of Monday 



Chap. XL NAPLES : POEMS. 291 

f (most likely the Montrose) may not reach Gibraltar so 
i soon as the Liverpool. If so, and if you should ac- 
6 tually be on board, you must stop at Gibraltar. But 
( there are ninety- nine chances to one against this. 
' Write at all events to Susan, to let her know what 
' you propose. 

' I do not wait till the Great Liverpool goes, be- 
( cause the object for me is to get into a warm climate 
6 as soon as possible. I am decidedly better. — Your 
i affectionate Brother, 

f John Sterling.' 

Barton did not go with him, none went; but he 
arrives safe, and not hurt in health, which is something. 

' To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London. 

' Malta, April 14th, 1842. 

' Dearest Mother, — I am writing to Susan 
' through France, by tomorrow's mail ; and will also 
( send you a line, instead of waiting for the longer Eng- 
f lish conveyance. 

' We reached this the day before yesterday, in the 
6 evening ; having had a strong breeze against us for a 
' day or two before ; which made me extremely uncom- 

* fortable, — and indeed my headache is hardly gone yet. 

* From about the 4th to the 9th of the month, we had 
' beautiful weather, and I was happy enough. You will 
' see by the map that the straightest line from Gibraltar 

* to this place goes close along the African coast ; which 
1 accordingly we saw with the utmost clearness ; and 
' found it generally a line of mountains, the higher 
' peaks and ridges covered with snow. We went close 



292 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

in to Algiers ; which looks strong, but entirely from 
art. The town lies on the slope of a straight coast ; 
and is not at all embayed, though there is some little 
shelter for shipping within the mole. It is a square 
patch of white buildings huddled together ; fringed 
with batteries ; and commanded by large forts on the 
ridge above: a most uncomfortable -looking place; 
though, no doubt, there are cafes and billiard-rooms 
and a theatre within, — for the French like to have 
their Houris, &c. on this side of Paradise, if possible. 

i Our party of fifty people (we had taken some on 
board at Gibraltar) broke up, on reaching this ; never, 
of course, to meet again. The greater part do not 
proceed to Alexandria. Considering that there was a 
bundle of midshipmen, ensigns, &c, we had as much 
reason among us as could perhaps be looked for ; and 
from several I gained bits of information and traits of 
character, though nothing very remarkable.' 

e I have established myself in an inn, rather than go 
to Lady Louis's ; * not feeling quite equal to company, 
except in moderate doses. I have, however, seen her 
a good deal ; and dine there today, very privately, 
for Sir John is not quite well, and they will have no 
guests. The place, however, is full of official ban- 
quetting, for various unimportant reasons. When 
here before, I was in much distress and anxiety, on 
my way from Rome ; and I suppose this it was that 
prevented it making the same impression on me as 
now, when it seems really the stateliest town I have 
ever seen. The architecture is generally of a corrupt 
Roman kind ; with something of the varied and pic- 

* Sister of Mrs. Strachey and Mrs. Buller : Sir John Louis was now 
in a high Naval post at Malta. % 



Chap. XI. NAPLES : POEMS. 293 

e turesque look, though much more massive, of our Eli- 
( zabethan buildings. We have the finest English sum- 
' mer and a pellucid sky.' * * ' Your affectionate 

' John Sterling.' 

At Naples next, for three weeks, was due admiration 
of the sceneries and antiquities, Bay and Mountain, by 
no means forgetting Art and the Museum : ' to Pozzuoli, 
' to Baise, round the Promontory of Sorrento ;' — above 
all, ' twice to Pompeii,' where the elegance and classic 
simplicity of Ancient Housekeeping strikes us much ; 
and again to Psestum, where ' the Temple of Neptune 
{ is far the noblest building I have ever seen ; and 
' makes both Greek and Revived Roman seem quite 
c barbaric' l Lord Ponsonby lodges in the same house 
' with me; — but, of course, I do not countenance an 
' adherent of a beaten Party!'* — Or let us take this 
more compendious account, which has much more of 
human in it, from an onward stage, ten days later : 

' To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

' Rome, May 13th, 1842. 

{ My dear Carlyle, — I hope I wrote to you be- 
' fore leaving England, to tell you of the necessity for 
' my doing so. Though coming to Italy, there was little 
' comfort in the prospect of being divided from my 
' family, and pursuits which grew on me every day. 
1 However, I tried to make the best of it, and have 
' gained both health and pleasure. 

' In spite of scanty communications from England 
' (owing to the uncertainty of my position), a word or 
* Long Letter to his Father : Naples, May 3d, 1842. 



JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

■ two concerning you and your dear Wife have readied 
' me. Lately it has often occurred to me, that the sight 
' of the Bay of Naples, of the beautiful coast from that 
( to this place, and of Rome itself, all bathed in summer 
( sunshine, and green with spring foliage, would be 
' some consolation to her. Pray give her my love. 

' I have been two days here ; and almost the first 
c thing I did was to visit the Protestant burial-ground, 
( and the graves of those I knew when here before. 
' But much as, being now alone here, I feel the differ- 
' ence, there is no scene where Death seems so little 
1 dreadful and miserable as in the lonelier neighbour- 
' hoods of this old place. All one's impressions, however, 
' as to that and every thing else, appear to me on refiec- 
' tion more affected than I had for a long time any notion 
1 of, by one's own isolation. All the feelings and acti- 
* vities which family, friends and occupation commonly 
' engage, are turned, here in one's solitude, with strange 
' force into the channels of mere observation and con- 
templation ; and the objects one is conversant with 
' seem to gain a tenfold significance from the abundance 
' of spare interest one now has to bestow on them. 
' This explains to me a good deal of the peculiar effect 

■ that Italy has always had on me ; and something of 
' that artistic enthusiasm which I remember you used 
' to think so singular in Goethe's Travels. Darley, 
f who is as much a brooding hermit in England as here, 
' felt nothing but disappointment from a country which 
' fills me with childish wonder and delight. 

' Of you I have received some slight notice from 
' Mrs. Strachey ; who is on her way hither ; and will 
( (she writes) be at Florence on the 15th, and here be- 
1 fore the end of the month. She notices having re- 



Chap. XI. NAPLES : POEMS. 295 

' ceived a Letter of yours which had pleased her much. 
' She now proposes spending the summer at Sorrento, 
6 or thereabouts ; and if mere delight of landscape and 
c climate were enough, Adam and Eve, had their courier 
' taken them to that region, might have done well enough 
1 without Paradise, — and not been tempted, either, by 
( any Tree of Knowledge ; a kind that does not nourish 
' in the Two Sicilies. 

{ The ignorance of the Neapolitans, from the highest 
( to the lowest, is very eminent ; and excites the admi- 
1 ration of all the rest of Italy. In the great building 
' containing all the Works of Art, and a Library of 
1 150,000 volumes, I asked for the best existing Book 
1 (a German one published ten years ago), on the Sta- 
' tues in that very Collection ; and, after a rabble of 
' clerks and custodes, got up to a dirty priest, who 
c bowing to the ground regretted " they did not pos- 
e sess it," but at last remembered that " they had en- 
' tered into negotiations on the subject, which as yet 
( had been unsuccessful." — The favourite device on the 
( walls at Naples is a vermilion Picture of a Male and 
' Female Soul respectively up to the waist (the waist 
( of a soul) in fire, and an Angel above each, watering 

* the sufferers from a watering-pot. This is intended 
' to gain alms for Masses. The same populace sit for 
' hours on the Mole, listening to rhapsodists who recite 
' Ariosto. I have seen I think five of them all within 

* a hundred yards of each other, and some sets of fiddlers 
s to boot. Yet there are few parts of the world where 
1 I have seen less laughter than there. The Miracle of 
i Januarius's Blood is, on the whole, my most curious 
' experience. The furious entreaties, shrieks and sobs, 

* of a set of old women, yelling till the Miracle was 



296 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

successfully performed, are things never to be for- 
gotten. 

' I spent three weeks in this most glittering of coun- 
tries, and saw most of the usual wonders, — the Psestan 
Temples being to me much the most valuable. But 
Pompeii and all that it has yielded, especially the 
Fresco Paintings, have also an infinite interest. When 
one considers that this prodigious series of beautiful 
designs supplied the place of our common room-papers, 
— the wealth of poetic imagery among the Ancients, 
and the corresponding traditional variety and elegance 
of pictorial treatment, seem equally remarkable. The 
Greek and Latin Books do not give one quite so fully 
this sort of impression ; because they afford no direct 
measure of the extent of their own diffusion. But 
these are ornaments from the smaller class of decent 
houses in a little Country Town ; and the greater 
number of them, by the slightness of the execution, 
shew very clearly that they were adapted to ordinary 
taste, and done by mere artisans. In general clear- 
ness, symmetry and simplicity of feeling, I cannot 
say that, on the whole, the works of Raffaelle equal 
them ; though of course he has endless beauties such 
as we could not find unless in the great original works 
from which these sketches at Pompeii were taken. 
Yet with all my much increased reverence for the 
Greeks, it seems more plain than ever that they had 
hardly anything of the peculiar devotional feeling of 
Christianity. 

' Rome, which I loved before above all the earth, 
now delights me more than ever; — though, at this 
moment, there is rain falling that would not discredit 
Oxford Street. The depth, sincerity and splendour 



Chap. XI. NAPLES : POEMS. 297 

that there once was in the semi-paganism of the Old 
Catholics, comes out in St. Peter's and its dependen- 
cies, almost as grandly as does Greek and Roman Art 
in the Forum and the Vatican Galleries. I wish you 
were here : but, at all events, hope to see you and 
your Wife once more during this summer. — Yours, 

' John Sterling.' 

At Paris, where he stopped a day and night, and 
generally through his whole journey from Marseilles 
to Havre, one thing attended him : the prevailing epi- 
demic of the place and year ; now gone, and nigh for- 
gotten, as other influenzas are. He writes to his Father : 
6 I have not yet met a single Frenchman, who could give 
' me any rational explanation why they were all in such 
6 a confounded rage against us. Definite causes of quar- 
( rel a statesman may know how to deal with, inasmuch 
' as the removal of them may help to settle the dispute. 
( But it must be a puzzling task to negotiate about in- 
' stincts ; to which class, as it seems to me, we must have 
1 recourse for an understanding of the present abhor- 
1 rence which every body on the other side of the Chan- 
' nel not only feels, but makes a point to boast of, against 
' the name of Britain. France is slowly arming, espe- 
e cially with Steam, en attendant a more than possible 
1 contest, in which they reckon confidently on the eager 
' cooperation of the Yankees ; as, vice versa, an Ameri- 
' can told me that his countrymen do on that of France. 

' One person at Paris (M. whom you know) pro- 

' voked me to tell him that " England did not want ano- 
' ther battle of Trafalgar ; but if France did, she might 
f compel England to gratify her." ' — After a couple of 
pleasant and profitable months, he was safe home again 



298 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

in the first days of June ; and saw Falmouth not under 
grey iron skies, and whirls of March dust, but bright 
with summer opulence and the roses coming out. 

It was what I call his ( fifth peregrinity ;' his fifth 
and last. He soon afterwards came up to London; 
spent a couple of weeks, with all his old vivacity, among 
us here. The iEsculapian oracles, it would appear, 
gave altogether cheerful prophecy ; the highest medical 
authority ( expresses the most decided opinion that I 
1 have gradually mended for some years ; and in truth 
' I have not, for six or seven, been so free from serious 
( symptoms of illness as at present.' So uncertain are 
all oracles iEsculapian and other ! 

During this visit, he made one new acquaintance 
which he much valued ; drawn thither, as I guess, by 
the wish to take counsel about Strafford. He writes to 
his Clifton friend, under date, July 1st, 1842: ( Lock- 
1 hart, of the Quarterly Review, I made my first oral 
( acquaintance with ; and found him as neat, clear and 
' cutting a brain as you would expect ; but with an 
s amount of knowledge, good nature and liberal anti- 
' bigotry, that would much surprise many. The tone 
6 of his children towards him seemed to me decisive of 
' his real kindness. He quite agreed with me as to the 
' threatening seriousness of our present social perplexi- 
6 ties, and the necessity and difficulty of doing some- 
' thing effectual for so satisfying the manual multitude 
' as not to overthrow all legal security.' 

' Of other persons whom I saw in London,' con- 
tinues he, ' there are several that would much interest 
' you, — though I missed Tennyson, by a mere chance.' 
* * * ' John Mill has completely finished, and sent to 
' the bookseller, his great work on Logic ; the labour of 



Chap. XI. NAPLES : POEMS. 299 

' many years of a singularly subtle, patient and com- 
' prehensive mind. It will be our chief speculative 
1 monument of this age. Mill and I could not meet 
6 above two or three times ; but it was with the open- 
{ ness and freshness of schoolboy friends, though our 
' friendship only dates from the manhood of both.' 

He himself was busier than ever; occupied con- 
tinually with all manner of Poetic interests. Coeur-de- 
Lion, a new and more elaborate attempt in the mock- 
heroic or comico-didactic vein, had been on hand for 
some time, the scope of it greatly deepening and expand- 
ing itself since it first took hold of him ; and now, soon 
after the Naples journey, it rose into shape on the 
wider plan ; shaken up probably by this new excite- 
ment, and indebted to Calabria, Palermo and the Medi- 
terranean scenes for much of the vesture it had. With 
this, which opened higher hopes for him than any of 
his previous efforts, he was now employing all his time 
and strength; — and continued to do so, this being the 
last effort granted him among us. 

Already, for some months, Strafford lay complete : 
but how to get it from the stocks ; in what method to 
launch it ? The step was questionable. Before going 
to Italy he had sent me the Manuscript ; still loyal and 
friendly; and willing to hear the worst that could be 
said of his poetic enterprise. I had to afflict him again, 
the good brave soul, with the deliberate report that I 
could not accept this Drama as his Picture of the Life 
of Strafford, or as any Picture of that strange Fact. 
To which he answered, with an honest manfulness, in a 
tone which is now pathetic enough to me, that he was 
much grieved yet much obliged, and uncertain how to 
decide. On the other hand, Mr. Hare wrote, warmly 



300 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

eulogising. Lockhart too spoke kindly, though taking 
some exceptions. It was a questionable case. On the 
whole, Strafford remained, for the present, unlaunched ; 
and Cceur -de-Lion was getting its first timbers diligently 
laid down. So passed, in peaceable seclusion, in whole- 
some employment and endeavour, the autumn and win- 
ter of 1842-3. On Christmas - day, he reports to his 
Mother : 

' I wished to write to you yesterday ; but was pre- 
' vented by the important business of preparing a Tree, 
1 in the German fashion, for the children. This project 
i answered perfectly, as it did last year ; and gave them 
f the greatest pleasure. I wish you and my Father 
{ could have been here to see their merry faces. Johnny 
6 was in the thick of the fun, and much happier than 
' Lord Anson on capturing the galleon. We are all going 
1 on well and quietly, but with nothing very new among 
' us.' — ' The last book I have lighted on is Moffat's Mis- 
6 sionary Labours in South Africa ; which is worth read- 
' ing. There is the best collection of lion stories in it 
' that I have ever seen. But the man is, also, really a very 
e good fellow ; and fit for something much better than 
( most lions are. He is very ignorant, and mistaken in 
e some things ; but has strong sense and heart ; and his 
c Narrative adds another to the many proofs of the 
' enormous power of Christianity on rude minds. No- 
' thing can be more chaotic, that is human at all, than 
' the notions of these poor Blacks, even after what is 
' called their conversion ; but the effect is produced. 
1 They do adopt pantaloons, and abandon polygamy ; 
' and I suppose will soon have newspapers and literary 
' soirees.' 



CHAPTER XII. 



DISASTER ON DISASTER. 



During all these years of struggle and wayfaring, his 
Father's household at Knightsbridge had stood health- 
ful, happy, increasing in wealth, free diligence, solidity 
and honest prosperity ; a fixed sunny islet, towards 
which, in all his voyagings and overclouded roamings, 
he could look with satisfaction, as to an ever-open port 
of refuge. 

The elder Sterling, after many battles, had reached 
his field of conquest in these years ; and was to be re- 
garded as a victorious man. "Wealth sufficient, increas- 
ing not diminishing, had rewarded his labours in the 
Times, which were now in their full flower ; he had 
influence of a sort ; went busily among busy public 
men; and enjoyed, in the questionable form attached 
to journalism and anonymity, a social consideration and 
position which were abundantly gratifying to him. A 
singular figure of the epoch ; and when you came to 
know him, which it was easy to fail of doing if you had 
not eyes and candid insight, a gallant, truly gifted, and 
manful figure, of his kind. We saw much of him in 
this house; much of all his family; and had grown to 
love them all right well, — him too, though that was the 
difficult part of the feat. For in his Irish way he played 
the conjuror very much, — "three hundred and sixty- 



302 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

five opinions in the year upon every subject," as a wag 
once said. In fact his talk, ever ingenious, emphatic 
and spirited in detail, was much defective in earnest- 
ness, at least in clear earnestness, of purport and out- 
come ; but went tumbling as if in mere welters of ex- 
plosive unreason ; a volcano heaving under vague de- 
luges of scoriae, ashes and imponderous pumice-stones, 
you could not say in what direction, nor well whether 
in any. Not till after good study did you see the deep 
molten lava-flood, which simmered steadily enough, and 
shewed very well by and by whither it was bound. For 
I must say of Edward Sterling, after all his daily ex- 
plosive sophistries, and fallacies of talk, he had a stub- 
born instinctive sense of what was manful, strong and 
worthy; recognised, with quick feeling, the charlatan 
under his solemnest wig ; knew as clearly as any man a 
pusillanimous tailor in buckram, an ass under the lion's 
skin, and did with his whole heart despise the same. 

The sudden changes of doctrine in the Times, which 
failed not to excite loud censure and indignant amaze- 
ment in those days, were first intelligible to you when 
you came to interpret them as his changes. These sud- 
den whirls from east to west on his part, and total 
changes of party and articulate opinion at a day's warn- 
ing, lay in the nature of the man, and could not be 
helped ; products of his fiery impatience, of the com- 
bined impetuosity and limitation of an intellect, which 
did nevertheless continually gravitate towards what was 
loyal, true and right on all manner of subjects. These, 
as I define them, were the mere scoriae and pumice 
wreck of a steady central lava-flood, which truly was 
volcanic and explosive to a strange degree, but did rest 
as few others on the grand fire-depths of the world. 



Chap. XII. DISASTER ON DISASTER. 303 

Thus, if he stormed along, ten thousand strong, in the 
time of the Reform Bill, indignantly denouncing Tory- 
ism and its obsolete insane pretensions ; and then if, 
after some experience of Whig management, he dis- 
cerned that Wellington and Peel, by whatever name 
entitled, were the men to be depended on by England, 
— there lay in all this, visible enough, a deeper consist- 
ency far more important than the superficial one, so 
much clamoured after by the vulgar. Which is the 
lion's-skin ; which is the real lion ? Let a man, if he 
is prudent, ascertain that before speaking ; — but above 
and beyond all things, let him ascertain it, and stand 
valiantly to it when ascertained ! In the latter essential 
part of the operation Edward Sterling was honourably 
successful to a really marked degree ; in the former, 
or prudential part, very much the reverse, as his his- 
tory in the Journalistic department at least, was con- 
tinually teaching him. 

An amazingly impetuous, hasty, explosive man, this 
" Captain Whirlwind," as I used to call him ! Great 
sensibility lay in him, too ; a real sympathy, and af- 
fectionate pity and softness, which he had an over- 
tendency to express even by tears, — a singular sight 
in so leonine a man. Enemies called them maudlin 
and hypocritical, these tears ; but that was nowise the 
complete account of them. On the whole, there did 
conspicuously lie a dash of ostentation, a self-conscious- 
ness apt to become loud and braggart, over all he said 
and did and felt : this was the alloy of the man, and you 
had to be thankful for the abundant gold along with it. 

Quizzing enough he got among us for all this, and 
for the singular chiaroscuro manner of procedure, like 
that of an Archimagus Cagliostro, or Kaiser Joseph In- 



304 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

cognito, which his anonymous known-unknown thun- 
derings in the Times necessitated in him ; and much we 
laughed, — not without explosive counter-banterings on 
his part; — but in fine one could not do without him ; 
one knew him at heart for a right brave man. " By- 
Jove, sir!" thus he would swear to you, with radiant 
face ; sometimes, not often, by a deeper oath. With 
persons of dignity, especially with women, to whom he 
was always very gallant, he had courtly delicate man- 
ners, verging towards the wiredrawn and elaborate ; on 
common occasions, he bloomed out at once into jolly 
familiarity of the gracefully boisterous kind, reminding 
you of mess-rooms and old Dublin days. His offhand 
mode of speech was always precise, emphatic, ingenious: 
his laugh, which was frequent rather than otherwise, had 
a sincerity of banter, but no real depth of sense for the 
ludicrous; and soon ended, if it grew too loud, in a 
mere dissonant scream. He was broad, well-built, stout 
of stature ; had a long lowish head, sharp grey eyes, 
with large strong aquiline face to match ; and walked, 
or sat, in an erect decisive manner. A remarkable 
man; and playing, especially in those years 1830-40, 
a remarkable part in the world. 

For it may be said, the emphatic, big-voiced, always 
influential and often strongly unreasonable Times News- 
paper, was the express emblem of Edward Sterling; he, 
more than any other man or circumstance, was the Times 
Newspaper, and thundered through it to the shaking of 
the spheres. And let us assert withal that his and its 
influence, in those days, was not ill grounded but rather 
well ; that the loud manifold unreason, often enough vi- 
tuperated and groaned over, was of the surface mostly ; 
that his conclusions, unreasonable, partial, hasty as they 



Chap. XII. DISASTER ON DISASTER. 305 

might at first be, gravitated irresistibly towards the 
right : in virtue of which grand quality indeed, the 
root of all good insight in man, his Times oratory 
found acceptance, and influential audience, amid the 
loud whirl of an England itself logically very stupid, 
and wise chiefly by instinct. 

England listened to this voice, as all might observe ; 
and to one who knew England and it, the result was 
not quite a strange one, and was honourable rather than 
otherwise to both parties. A good judge of men's talents 
has been heard to say of Edward Sterling : " There is 
" not a faculty of improvising equal to this in all my 
" circle. Sterling rushes out into the clubs, into Lon- 
" don society, rolls about all day, copiously talking 
" modish nonsense or sense, and listening to the like, 
" with the multifarious miscellany of men ; comes home 
"at night; redacts it into a Times Leader, — and is 
" found to have hit the essential purport of the world's 
" immeasurable babblement that day, with an accuracy 
" beyond all other men. This is what the multifarious 
" Babel sound did mean to say in clear words ; this, 
" more nearly than anything else. Let the most gifted 
" intellect, capable of writing epics, try to write such a 
" Leader for the Morning Newspapers ! No intellect 
" but Edward Sterling's can do it. An improvising 
" faculty without parallel in my experience." — In this 
' improvising faculty,' much more nobly developed, as 
well as in other faculties and qualities with unexpectedly 
new and improved figure, John Sterling, to the accurate 
observer, shewed himself very much the son of Edward. 

Connected with this matter, a remarkable Note has 
come into my hands ; honourable to the man I am writ- 
ing of, and in some sort to another higher man ; which, 

x 



306 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

as it may now (unhappily for us all) be published with- 
out scruple, I will not withhold here. The support, by 
Edward Sterling and the Times, of Sir Robert Peel's 
first Ministry, and generally of Peel's statesmanship, 
was a conspicuous fact in its day ; but the return it met 
with from the person chiefly interested may be con- 
sidered well worth recording. The following Letter, 
after meandering through I know not what intricate 
conduits, and consultations of the Mysterious Entity 
whose address it bore, came to Edward Sterling as the 
real flesh-and-blood proprietor, and has been found 
among his papers. It is marked Private : 

' (Private) To the Editor of the Times. 

' Whitehall, April 18th, 1835. 

e Sir, — Having this day delivered into the hands of 
' the King the Seals of Office, I can, without any im- 
6 putation of an interested motive, or any impediment 
6 from scrupulous feelings of delicacy, express my deep 
' sense of the powerful support which that Government 

* over which I had the honour to preside received from 

* the Times Newspaper. 

' If I do not offer the expressions of personal grati- 
' tude, it is because I feel that such expressions would 
( do injustice to the character of a support which was 
' given exclusively on the highest and most independent 
6 grounds of public principle. I can say this with per- 
' feet truth, as I am addressing one whose person even 
' is unknown to me, and who during my tenure of Power 
' studiously avoided every species of intercourse which 

* could throw a suspicion upon the motives by which he 

* was actuated. I should, however, be doing injustice 



Chap. XII. DISASTER ON DISASTER. 307 

' to my own feelings, if I were to retire from Office 
f without one word of acknowledgment ; without at 
' least assuring you of the admiration with which I wit- 
' nessed, during the arduous contest in which I was 
' engaged, the daily exhibition of that extraordinary 
' ability to which I was indebted for a support, the more 
' valuable because it was an impartial and discriminating 
1 support. — I have the honour to be, Sir, — Ever your 

* most obedient and faithful servant, 

' Robert Peel.' 

To which, with due loftiness and diplomatic gravity 
and brevity, there is Answer, Draught of Answer in 
Edward Sterling's hand, from the Mysterious Entity so 
honoured, in the following terms : 

' To the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart. §c. %c. §c. 

( Sir, — It gives me sincere satisfaction to learn from 

* the Letter with which you have honoured me, bearing 
' yesterday's date, that you estimate so highly the efforts 
1 which have been made during the last five months by 
' the Times Newspaper, to support the cause of rational 

* and wholesome Government which his Majesty had 
' entrusted to your guidance ; and that you appreciate 
' fairly the disinterested motive, of regard to the public 
' welfare, and to that alone, through which this Journal 

* has been prompted to pursue a policy in accordance 

* with that of your Administration. It is, permit me to 
' say, by such motives only, that the Times, ever since 

* I have known it, has been influenced, whether in de- 

* fence of the Government of the day, or in constitu- 
6 tional resistance to it : and indeed there exist no other 



808 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

* motives of action for a Journalist, compatible either 
( with the safety of the press, or with the political 
1 morality of the great bulk of its readers. — With much 
' respect, I have the honour to be, Sir, &c. &c. &c. 
6 The Editor of the " Times.'" 

Of this Note, I do not think there was the least 
whisper during Edward Sterling's lifetime; which fact 
also one likes to remember of him, so ostentatious and 
little reticent a man. For the rest, his loyal admiration 
of Sir Robert Peel, — sanctioned, and as it were almost 
consecrated to his mind, by the great example of the 
Duke of Wellington, whom he reverenced always with 
true hero-worship, — was not a journalistic one, but a 
most intimate authentic feeling, sufficiently apparent in 
the very heart of his mind. Among the many opinions 
i liable to three hundred and sixty-five changes in the 
c course of the year,' this in reference to Peel and Wel- 
lington was one which never changed, but was the same 
all days and hours. To which, equally genuine, and 
coming still oftener to light in those times, there might 
one other be added, one and hardly more : fixed con- 
tempt, not unmingled with detestation, for Daniel O'Con- 
nell. This latter feeling, we used often laughingly to 
say, was his grand political principle, the one firm cen- 
tre where all else went revolving. But internally the 
other also was deep and constant ; and indeed these 
were properly his two centres, — poles of the same axis, 
negative and positive, the one presupposing the other. 

O'Connell he had known in young Dublin days ; — 
and surely no man could well venerate another less ! It 
was his deliberate, unalterable opinion of the then Great 
O, that good would never come of him ; that only mis- 



Chap. XII. DISASTER ON DISASTER. 309 

chief, and this in huge measure, would come. That 
however shewy, and adroit in rhetoric and management, 
he was a man of incurably commonplace intellect, and 
of no character but a hollow, blustery, pusillanimous 
and unsound one ; great only in maudlin patriotisms, 
in speciosities, astucities, — in the miserable gifts for 
becoming Chief .Demagogos, Leader of a deep -sunk 
Populace towards its Lands of Promise ; which trade, 
in any age or country, and especially in the Ireland of 
this age, our indignant friend regarded (and with reason) 
as an extremely ugly one for a man. He had himself 
zealously advocated Catholic Emancipation, and was 
not without his Irish patriotism, very different from 
the Orange sort ; but the l Liberator' was not admirable 
to him, and grew daily less so to an extreme degree. 
Truly, his scorn of the said Liberator, now riding in 
supreme dominion on the wings of blarney, devil-ward 
of a surety, with the Liberated all following and huz- 
zaing; his fierce gusts of wrath and abhorrence over 
him, rose occasionally almost to the sublime. We 
laughed often at these vehemences: — and they were 
not wholly laughable ; there was something very serious, 
and very true, in them ! This creed of Edward Ster- 
ling's would not now, in either pole of its axis, look 
so strange as it then did in many quarters. 

During those ten years which might be defined as 
the culminating period of Edward Sterling's life, his 
house at South Place, Knightsbridge, had worn a gay 
and solid aspect, as if built at last on the high table- 
land of sunshine and success, the region of storms and 
dark weather now all victoriously traversed and lying 
safe below. Health, work, wages, whatever is needful to 



310 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

a man, lie had, in rich measure ; and a frank stout heart 
to guide the same ; lived in such style as pleased him ; 
drove his own chariot up and down (himself often acting 
as Jehu, and reminding you a little of Times thunder 
even in driving) ; consorted, after a fashion, with the 
powerful of the world ; saw in due vicissitude a mis- 
cellany of social faces round him, — pleasant parties, 
which he liked well enough to garnish by a lord; 
" Irish lord, if no better might be," as the banter went. 
For the rest, he loved men of worth and intellect, and 
recognised them well, whatever their title : this was his 
own patent of worth which Nature had given him ; a 
central light in the man, which illuminated into a kind 
of beauty, serious or humorous, all the artificialities he 
had accumulated on the surface of him. So rolled his 
days, not quietly, yet prosperously, in manifold com- 
merce with men. At one in the morning, when all had 
vanished into sleep, his lamp was kindled in his library ; 
and there, twice or thrice a week, for a three hours' 
space, he launched his bolts, which next morning were 
to shake the high places of the world. 

John's relation to his Father, when one saw John 
here, was altogether frank, joyful and amiable : he 
ignored the Times thunder for most part, coldly taking 
the Anonymous for non-extant ; spoke of it floutingly, 
if he spoke at all : indeed a pleasant half-bantering dia- 
lect was the common one between Father and Son ; and 
they, especially with the gentle, simple-hearted, just- 
minded Mother for treble-voice between them, made a 
very pretty glee harmony together. 

So had it lasted, ever since poor John's voyagings 
began ; his Father's house standing always as a fixed 
sunny islet, with safe harbour for him. So it could not 



Chap. XII. DISASTER ON DISASTER. 311 

always last. This sunny islet was now also to break 
and go down : so many firm islets, fixed pillars in his 
fluctuating world, pillar after pillar, were to break and 
go down ; till swiftly all, so to speak, were sunk in the 
dark waters, and he with them ! Our little History is 
now hastening to a close. 

In the beginning of 1843, news reached us that 
Sterling had, in his too reckless way, encountered a 
dangerous accident : maids, in the room where he was, 
were lifting a heavy table ; he, seeing them in difficulty, 
had snatched at the burden; heaved it away, — but 
broken a bloodvessel by the business; and was now, 
after extensive hemorrhage, lying dangerously ill. The 
doctors hoped the worst was over; but the case was 
evidently serious. In the same days, too, his Mother 
had been seized here by some painful disease, which from 
its continuance grew alarming. Sad omens for Edward 
Sterling, who by this time had as good as ceased writing 
or working in the Times, having comfortably winded 
up his affairs there ; and was looking forward to a freer 
idle life befitting his advanced years henceforth. Fatal 
eclipse had fallen over that household of his ; never to 
be lifted off again till all darkened into night. 

By dint of watchful nursing, John Sterling got on 
foot once more : but his Mother did not recover, quite 
the contrary. Her case too grew very questionable. 
Disease of the heart, said the medical men at last ; not 
immediately, not perhaps for a length of years, danger- 
ous to life, said they ; but without hope of cure. The 
poor lady suffered much; and, though affecting hope 
always, grew weaker and weaker. John ran up to Town 
in March ; I saw him, on the morrow or next day after, 



312 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

in his own room at Knightsbridge : he had caught fresh 
cold over night, the servant having left his window up, 
but I was charged to say nothing of it, not to flutter 
the already troubled house : he was going home again 
that very day, and nothing ill would come of it. We 
understood the family at Falmouth, his Wife being now 
near her confinement again, could at any rate comport 
with no long absence. He was cheerful, even rudely 
merry ; himself pale and ill, his poor Mother's cough 
audible occasionally through the wall. Very kind, too, 
and gracefully affectionate ; but I observed a certain 
grimness in his mood of mind, and under his light 
laughter lay something unusual, something stern, as if 
already dimmed in the coming shadows of Fate. "Yes, 
" yes, you are a good man : but I understand they 
" mean to appoint you to Rhadamanthus's post, which 
" has been vacant for some time ; and you will see how 
" you like that ! " This was one of the things he said ; 
a strange effulgence of wild drollery flashing through 
the ice of earnest pain and sorrow. He looked paler 
than usual : almost for the first time, I had myself a 
twinge of misgiving as to his own health ; for hitherto 
I had been used to blame as much as pity his fits of 
dangerous illness, and would often angrily remonstrate 
with him that he might have excellent health, would he 
but take reasonable care of himself, and learn the art of 
sitting still. Alas, as if he could learn it ; as if Nature 
had not laid her ban on him even there, and said in 
smiles and frowns manifoldly, " No, that thou shalt 
not learn ! " 

He went that day; he never saw his good true 
Mother more. Very shortly afterwards, in spite of 
doctors' prophecies, and affectionate illusions, she grew 



Chap. XII. DISASTER ON DISASTER. 313 

alarmingly and soon hopelessly worse. Here are his 
two last Letters to her : 

' To Mrs. Sterling, Knightsbridge, London. 

6 Falmouth, April 8th, 1843. 

' Dearest Mother, — I could do you no good, but 
c it would be the greatest comfort to me if I could be 
( near you. Nothing would detain me but Susan's con- 
e dition. I feel that until her confinement is over, I 
' ought to remain here, — unless you wished me to go 
1 to you ; in which case she would be the first to send 
1 me off. Happily she is doing as well as possible, and 
( seems even to gain strength every day. She sends her 
e love to you. 

' The children are all doing well. I rode with 
f Edward today, through some of the pleasant lanes in 
' the neighbourhood ; and was delighted, as I have often 
1 been at the same season, to see the primroses under 
' every hedge. It is pleasant to think that the Maker 
e of them can make other flowers for the gardens of his 
' other mansions. We have here a softness in the air, 
' a smoothness of the clouds, and a mild sunshine, that 

• combine in lovely peace with the first green of spring 
e and the mellow whiteness of the sails upon the quiet 
' sea. The whole aspect of the world is full of a quiet 
' harmony, that influences even one's bodily frame, and 
1 seems to make one's very limbs aware of something 
' living, good and immortal in all around us. Knowing 
1 how you suffer, and how weak you are, anything is a 

• blessing to me that helps me to rise out of confusion 
1 and grief into the sense of God and joy. I could not 

• indeed but feel how much happier I should have been, 



314 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

f this morning, had you been with me, and delighting as 
1 you would have done in all the little as well as the 
i large beauty of the world. But it was still a satisfac- 
f tion to feel how much I owe to you of the power of 
' perceiving meaning, reality and sweetness in all health- 
' ful life. And thus I could fancy that you were still 
1 near me ; and that I could see you, as I have so often 
' seen you, looking with earnest eyes at wayside flowers. 
( I would rather not have written what must recall 
' your thoughts to your present sufferings ; but, dear 
' Mother, I wrote only what I felt ; and perhaps you 
' would rather have it so, than that I should try to find 
1 other topics. I still hope to be with you before long. 
' Meanwhile and always, God bless you, is the prayer 
' of — Your affectionate son, 

{ John Sterling.' 

To the same. 

1 Falmouth, April 12th, 1843. 

' Dearest Mother, — I have just received my 
' Father's Letter ; which gives me at least the comfort 
' of believing that you do not suffer very much pain. 
' That your mind has remained so clear and strong, is 
' an infinite blessing. 

' I do not know anything in the world that would 
' make up to me at all for wanting the recollection of 
' the days I spent with you lately, when I was amazed 
i at the freshness and life of all your thoughts. It 
( brought back far-distant years, in the strangest, most 
' peaceful way. I felt myself walking with you in 
( Greenwich Park, and on the sea-shore at Sandgate ; 
' almost even I seemed a baby with you bending over 



Chap. XII. DISASTER ON DISASTER. 315 

' me. Dear Mother, there is surely something uniting 
' us that cannot perish. I seem so sure of a love which 
1 shall last and reunite us, that even the remembrance, 
' painful as that is, of all my own follies and ill tempers, 
{ cannot shake this faith. When I think of you, and 
' know how you feel towards me, and have felt for every 
( moment of almost forty years, it would be too dark to 
' believe that we shall never meet again. It was from 
1 you that I first learnt to think, to feel, to imagine, 
( to believe ; and these powers, which cannot be extin- 
' guished, will one day enter anew into communion with 
' you. I have bought it very dear by the prospect of 
' losing you in this world, — but since you have been so 
' ill, everything has seemed to me holier, loftier and 
6 more lasting, more full of hope and final joy. 

' It would be a very great happiness to see you once 
( more even here ; but I do not know if that will be 
' granted to me. But for Susan's state, I should not 
6 hesitate an instant ; as it is, my duty seems to be to 
1 remain, and I have no right to repine. There is no 
' sacrifice that she would not make for me, and it would 
' be too cruel to endanger her by mere anxiety on my 
' account. Nothing can exceed her sympathy with my 
1 sorrow. But she cannot know, no one can, the recol- 
1 lections of all you have been and done for me ; which 
' now are the most sacred and deepest, as well as most 
' beautiful, thoughts that abide with me. May God 
' bless you, dearest Mother. It is much to believe that 

* He feels for you all that you have ever felt for your 

* children. 

' John Sterling.' 

A day or two after this, ' on Good Friday, 1843,' 



316 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

his Wife got happily through her confinement, bring- 
ing him, he writes, ' a stout little girl, who and the 
Mother are doing as well as possible.' The little girl 
still lives and does well ; but for the Mother there was 
another lot. Till the Monday following she too did 
altogether well, he affectionately watching her ; but in 
the course of that day, some change for the worse was 
noticed, though nothing to alarm either the doctors or 
him ; he watched by her bedside all night, still without 
alarm ; but sent again in the morning, Tuesday morn- 
ing, for the doctors, — who did not seem able to make 
much of the symptoms. She appeared weak and low, 
but made no particular complaint. The London post 
meanwhile was announced ; Sterling went into another 
room to learn what tidings of his Mother it brought him. 
Returning speedily with a face which in vain strove to 
be calm, his Wife asked, How at Knightsbridge ? " My 
" Mother is dead," answered Sterling ; " died on Sun- 
" day : she is gone." — " Poor old man !" murmured the 
other, thinking of old Edward Sterling now left alone 
in the world ; and these were her own last words : in 
two hours more she too was dead. In two hours Mo- 
ther and Wife were suddenly both snatched away from 
him. 

' It came with awful suddenness!' writes he to his 
Clifton friend. ' Still for a short time I had my Susan : 
( but I soon saw that the medical men were in terror ; 
• and almost within half an hour of that fatal Knights- 
1 bridge news, I began to suspect our own pressing dan- 
' ger. I received her last breath upon my lips. Her 
' mind was much sunk, and her perceptions slow ; but 
1 a few minutes before the last, she must have caught 
' the idea of dissolution ; and signed that I should kiss 



Chap. XII. DISASTER ON DISASTER. 817 

' her. She faltered painfully, "Yes! yes!" — returned 
* with fervency the pressure of my lips ; and in a few 
1 moments her eyes began to fix, her pulse to cease.' 
She too is gone from me ! It was Tuesday morning, 
April 18th, 1843. His Mother had died on the Sunday 
before. 

He had loved his excellent kind Mother, as he 
ought and well might: in that good heart, in all the 
wanderings of his own, there had ever been a shrine of 
warm pity, of mother's love and blessed soft affections 
for him ; and now it was closed in the Eternities for- 
evermore. His poor Life-partner too, his other self, who 
had faithfully attended him so long in all his pilgrim- 
ings, cheerily footing the heavy tortuous ways along with 
him, can follow him no farther ; sinks now at his side : 
" The rest of your pilgrimings alone, O Friend, — adieu, 
" adieu !" She too is forever hidden from his eyes ; and 
he stands, on the sudden, very solitary amid the tumult 
of fallen and falling things. ' My little baby girl is 
' doing well ; poor little wreck cast upon the seabeach 
' of life. My children require me tenfold now. What 
' I shall do, is all confusion and darkness.' 

The younger Mrs. Sterling was a true good woman ; 
loyal-hearted, willing to do well, and struggling won- 
derfully to do it amid her languors and infirmities ; 
rescuing, in many ways, with beautiful female heroism 
and adroitness, what of fertility their uncertain, wander- 
ing, unfertile way of life still left possible, and cheerily 
making the most of it. A genial, pious and harmonious 
fund of character was in her ; and withal an indolent, 
half- unconscious force of intellect, and justness and 
delicacy of perception, which the casual acquaintance 



318 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

scarcely gave her credit for. Sterling much respected 
her decision in matters literary ; often altering and mo- 
difying where her feeling clearly went against him ; and 
in verses especially trusting to her ear, which was ex- 
cellent, while he knew his own to be worth little. I 
remember her melodious rich plaintive tone of voice ; 
and an exceedingly bright smile which she sometimes 
had, effulgent with sunny gaiety and true humour, 
among other fine qualities. 

Sterling has lost much in these two hours ; how 
much that has long been can never again be for him ! 
Twice in one morning, so to speak, has a mighty wind 
smitten the corners of his house ; and much lies in dis- 
mal ruins round him. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



ventnor: death. 



In this sudden avalanche of sorrows Sterling, weak and 
worn as we have seen, bore up manfully, and with pious 
valour fronted what had come upon him. He was not 
a man to yield to vain waitings, or make repinings at 
the unalterable : here was enough to be long mourned 
over ; but here, for the moment, was very much impe- 
ratively requiring to be done. That evening, he called 
his children round him ; spoke words of religious admo- 
nition and affection to them ; said, " He must now be a 
Mother as well as Father to them." On the evening of 
the funeral, writes Mr. Hare, he bade them good night, 
adding these words, " If I am taken from you, God will 
take care of you." He had six children left to his 
charge, two of them infants ; and a dark outlook ahead 
of them and him. The good Mrs. Maurice, the chil- 
dren's young Aunt, present at this time and often after- 
wards till all ended, was a great consolation. 

Falmouth, it may be supposed, had grown a sorrow- 
ful place to him, peopled with haggard memories in his 
weak state ; and now again, as had been usual with him, 
change of place suggested itself as a desirable allevia- 
tion ; — and indeed, in some sort, as a necessity. He has 
( friends here,' he admits to himself, ( whose kindness 



320 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

is beyond all price, all description ;' but bis little chil- 
dren, if anything befel him, have no relative within two 
hundred miles. He is now sole watcher over them; and 
his very life is so precarious ; nay, at any rate, it would 
appear, he has to leave Falmouth every spring, or run 
the hazard of worse. Once more, what is to be done ? 
Once more, — and now, as it turned out, for the last 
time. 

A still gentler climate, greater proximity to London 
where his Brother Anthony now was and most of his 
friends and interests were : these considerations recom- 
mended Ventnor, in the beautiful Southeastern corner 
of the Isle of Wight ; where on inquiry an eligible 
house was found for sale. The house and its surround- 
ing piece of ground, improvable both, were purchased; 
he removed thither in June of this year 1843; and set 
about improvements and adjustments on a frank scale. 
By the decease of his Mother, he had become rich in 
money; his share of the West-India properties having 
now fallen to him, which, added to his former incomings, 
made a revenue he could consider ample and abundant. 
Falmouth friends looked lovingly towards him, pro- 
mising occasional visits; old Herstmonceux, which he 
often spoke of revisiting but never did, was not far off; 
and London with all its resources and remembrances 
was now again accessible. He resumed his work ; and 
had hopes of again achieving something. 

The Poem of Cceur-de-Lion has been already men- 
tioned, and the wider form and aim it had got since he 
first took it in hand. It was above a year before the 
date of these tragedies and changes, that he had sent me 
a Canto, or couple of Cantos, of Cceur-de-Lion ; loyally 
again demanding my opinion, harsh as it had often 



Chap. XIII. VENTNOR : DEATH. 321 

been on that side. This time I felt right glad to answer 
in another tone : " That here was real felicity and in- 
" genuity, on the prescribed conditions ; a decisively 
" rhythmic quality in this composition ; thought and 
" phraseology actually dancing, after a sort. What the 
" plan and scope of the Work might be, he had not said, 
" and I could not judge ; but here was a light opulence 
" of airy fancy, picturesque conception, vigorous deline- 
" ation, all marching on as with cheerful drum and fife, 
" if without more rich and complicated forms of melody : 
" if a man would write in metre, this sure enough was 
" the way to try doing it." For such encouragement, 
from that stinted quarter, Sterling, I doubt not, was 
very thankful; and of course it might cooperate with 
the inspirations from his Naples Tour to further him a 
little in this his now chief task in the way of Poetry ; 
a thought which, among my many almost pathetic re- 
membrances of contradictions to his Poetic tendency, is 
pleasant for me. 

But on the whole, it was no matter. With or with- 
out encouragement, he was resolute to persevere in 
Poetry, and did persevere. When I think now of his 
modest, quiet steadfastness in this business of Poetry ; 
how, in spite of friend and foe, he silently persisted, 
without wavering, in the form of utterance he had chosen 
for himself; and to what length he carried it, and vin- 
dicated himself against us all, — his character comes out 
in a new light to me, with more of a certain central in- 
flexibility and noble silent resolution than I had elsewhere 
noticed in it. This summer, moved by natural feelings, 
which were sanctioned, too, and in a sort sanctified to him, 
by the remembered counsel of his late Wife, he printed 
the Tragedy of Strafford. But there was in the public no 

Y 



JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

contradiction to the hard vote I had given about it : the 
little Book fell dead-born; and Sterling had again to 
take his disappointment; — which it must be owned he 
cheerfully did ; and, resolute to try it again and ever 
again, went along with his Cceur-de~Lion 3 as if the public 
had been all with him. An honourable capacity to stand 
single against the whole world ; such as all men need, 
from time to time ! After all, who knows whether, in his 
overclouded, broken, nighty way of life, incapable of long 
hard drudgery, and so shut out from the solid forms of 
Prose, this Poetic Form, which he could well learn as 
he could all forms, was not the suitablest for him ? 

This work of Cceur-de-Lion he prosecuted steadfastly 
in his new home ; and indeed employed on it henceforth 
all the available days that were left him in this world. 
As was already said, he did not live to complete it ; but 
some eight Cantos, three or four of which I know to pos- 
sess high worth, were finished, before Death intervened, 
and there he had to leave it. Perhaps it will yet be given 
to the public ; and in that case be better received than 
the others were, by men of judgment; and serve to put 
Sterling's Poetic pretensions on a much truer footing. I 
can say, that to readers who do prefer a poetic diet, this 
ought to be welcome : if you can contrive to love the 
thing which is still called " poetry" in these days, here 
is a decidedly superior article in that kind, — richer than 
one of a hundred that you smilingly consume. 

In this same month of June 1843, while the house at 
Ventnor was getting ready, Sterling was again in London 
for a few days. Of course at Knightsbridge, now fallen 
under such sad change, many private matters needed to 
be settled by his Father and Brother and him. Captain 
Anthony, now minded to remove with his family to 



Chap. XIII. VENTNOR : DEATH. S2S 

London and quit the military way of life, had agreed 
to purchase the big family house, which he still occu- 
pies; the old man, now rid of that incumbrance, retired 
to a smaller establishment of his own; — came ultimately 
to be Anthony's guest, and spent his last days so. He 
was much lamed and broken, the half of his old life sud- 
denly torn away; — and other losses, which he yet knew 
not of, lay close ahead of him. In a year or two, the 
rugged old man, borne down by these pressures, quite 
gave way; sank into paralytic and other infirmities; and 
was released from life's sorrows, under his son Anthony's 
roof, in the fall of 184T. — The house in Knightsbridge 
was, at the time we now speak of, empty except of ser- 
vants ; Anthony having returned to Dublin, I suppose 
to conclude his affairs there, prior to removal. John 
lodged in a Hotel. 

We had our fair share of his company in this visit, 
as in all the past ones; but the intercourse, I recollect, 
was dim and broken, a disastrous shadow hanging over 
it, not to be cleared away by effort. Two American 
gentlemen, acquaintances also of mine, had been recom- 
mended to him, by Emerson most likely: one morning 
Sterling appeared here with a strenuous proposal that 
we should come to Knightsbridge, and dine with him and 
them. Objections, general dissuasions were not want- 
ing: The empty dark house, such needless trouble, and 
the like ; — but he answered in his quizzing way, " Na- 
" ture herself prompts you, when a stranger comes, to 
" give him a dinner. There are servants yonder ; it is 
" all easy; come ; both of you are bound to come." And 
accordingly we went. I remember it as one of the sad- 
dest dinners ; though Sterling talked copiously, and our 
friends, Theodore Parker one of them, were pleasant 



824 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

and distinguished men. All was so haggard in one's 
memory, and half-consciously in one's anticipations ; sad, 
as if one had been dining in a ruin, in the crypt of a mau- 
soleum. Our conversation was waste and logical, I for- 
get quite on what, not joyful and harmoniously effusive : 
Sterling's silent sadness was painfully apparent through 
the bright mask he had bound himself to wear. "Withal 
one could notice now, as on his last visit, a certain stern- 
ness of mood, unknown in better days ; as if strange gor- 
gon-faces of earnest Destiny were more and more rising 
round him, and the time for sport were past. He looked 
always hurried, abrupt, even beyond wont ; and indeed 
was, I suppose, overwhelmed in details of business. 

One evening, I remember he came down hither, de- 
signing to have a freer talk with us. We were all sad 
enough; and strove rather to avoid speaking of what 
might make us sadder. Before any true talk had been 
got into, an interruption occurred, some unwelcome ar- 
rival: Sterling abruptly rose; gave me the signal to rise; 
and we unpolitely walked away, adjourning to his Hotel, 
which I recollect was in the Strand, near Hungerford 
Market ; some ancient comfortable quaint-looking place, 
off the street ; where, in a good warm queer old room, 
the remainder of our colloquy was duly finished. We 
spoke of Cromwell, among other things which I have 
now forgotten; on which subject Sterling was trenchant, 
positive, and in some essential points, wrong, — as I said 
I would convince him some day. " Well, well !" an- 
swered he, with a shake of the head. — We parted before 
long; bedtime for invalids being come: he escorted me 
down certain carpeted backstairs, and would not be for- 
bidden : we took leave under the dim skies ; — and alas, 
little as I then dreamt of it, this, so far as I can calculate, 



Chap. XIII. VENTNOR : DEATH. 325 

must have been the last time I ever saw him in the world. 
Softly as a common evenings the last of the evenings had 
passed away, and no other would come for me forever- 
more. 

Through the summer he was occupied with fitting 
up his new residence, selecting governesses, servants; 
earnestly endeavouring to set his house in order, on the 
new footing it had now assumed. Extensive improve- 
ments in his garden and grounds, in which he took due 
interest to the last, were also going on. His Brother, and 
Mr. Maurice his brother-in-law, — especially Mrs. Mau- 
rice the kind sister, faithfully endeavouring to be as a 
mother to her poor little nieces, — were occasionally with 
him. All hours available for labour on his literary tasks, 
he employed, almost exclusively I believe, on Cosur-de- 
Lion; with what energy, the progress he had made in 
that "Work, and in the art of Poetic composition gene- 
rally, amid so many sore impediments, best testifies. I 
perceive, his life in general lay heavier on him than it 
had done before ; his mood of mind is grown more 
sombre; — indeed the very solitude of this Ventnor as 
a place, not to speak of other solitudes, must have been 
new and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, 
now or ever ; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes 
of a kind of wild gaiety break through. He works 
steadily at his task, with all the strength left him ; en- 
dures the past as he may; and makes gallant front against 
the world. ( I am going on quietly here, rather than 
( happily,' writes he, to his friend Newman ; ' some- 
e times quite helpless, not from distinct illness, but from 
1 sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The heart is 
( gone out of my life. My children, however, are doing 
f well; and the place is cheerful and mild.' 



326 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

From Letters of this period I might select some me- 
lancholy enough; but will prefer to give the following 
one (nearly the last I can give), as indicative of a less 
usual temper: 

' To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London, 

4 Ventnor, December 7th, 1843. 

e My dear Carlyle, — My Irish Newspaper was not 
? meant as a hint that I wanted a Letter. It contained 
( an absurd long Advertisement, — some project for re- 
' generating human knowledge, &c. &c; to which I pre- 
' fixed my private mark (a blot), thinking that you might 
( be pleased to know of a fellow-labourer somewhere in 
' Tipper ary. 

f Your Letter, like the Scriptural oil, — (they had no 
( patent lamps then, and used the best oil, 7s. per gallon), 
\ — has made my face to shine. There is but one person 
f in the world, I shall not tell you who, from whom a 
* Letter would give me so much pleasure. It would be 
e nearly as good at Pekin, in the centre of the most en- 
f lightened Mandarins; but here at Ventnor, where there 
' are few Mandarins and no enlightenment, — fountains 
' in the wilderness, even were they miraculous, are no- 
f thing compared with your handwriting. Yet it is sad 
' that you should be so melancholy. I often think that 
c though Mercury was the pleasanter fellow, and pro- 
( bably the happier, Saturn was the greater god; — rather 
c cannibal or so, but one excuses it in him, as in some 
' other heroes one knows of. 

e It is, as you say, your destiny to write about Crom- 
' well : and you will make a book of him, at which the 
i ears of our grandchildren will tingle; — and as one may 



Chap. XIII. VENTNOR : DEATH. 327 

e hope that the ears of human nature will be growing 
f longer and longer, the tingling will be proportionably 
c greater than we are accustomed to. Do what you 
f can, I fear there will be little gain from the Royalists. 
c There is something very small about the biggest of 
*' them that I have ever fallen in with, unless you count 
' old Hobbes a Royalist. 

' Curious to see that you have them exactly preserved 
f in the Country Gentlemen of our day; while of the Puri- 
( tans not a trace remains except in History. Squirism 
* had already, in that day, become the caput mortuum that 
e it is now; and has therefore, like other mummies, been 
f able to last. What was opposed to it was the Life of 
f Puritanism, — then on the point of disappearing ; and 
1 it too has left its mummy at Exeter Hall on the plat- 
c form and elsewhere. One must go back to the Middle 
( Ages to see Squirism as rampant and vivacious as Bib- 
{ licism was in the Seventeenth Century: and I suppose 
{ our modern Country Gentlemen are about as near to 
6 what the old Knights and Barons were who fought the 
( Crusades, as our modern Evangelicals to the fellows 
' who sought the Lord by the light of their own pistol- 
f shots. 

1 Those same Crusades are now pleasant matter for 
( me. You remember, or perhaps you do not, a thing 
' I once sent you about Cceur-de-Lion. Long since, I 
e settled to make the Cantos you saw part of a larger 
( Book; and worked at it, last autumn and winter, till I 
' had a bad illness. I am now at work on it again ; and 
6 go full sail, like my hero. There are six Cantos done, 
( roughly, besides what you saw. I have struck out most 
' of the absurdest couplets, and given the whole a higher 
' though still sportive tone. It is becoming a kind of 



JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

e Odyssey, with, a laughing and Christian Achilles for 
{ hero. One may manage to wrap, in that chivalrous 
e brocade, many things belonging to our Time, and 
6 capable of interesting it. The thing is not bad ; but 
1 will require great labour. Only it is labour that I 
' thoroughly like ; and which keeps the maggots out 
i of one's brain, until their time. 

( I have never spoken to you, never been able to 
1 speak to you, of the change in my life, — almost as great, 
' one fancies, as one's own death. Even now, although 
' it seems as if I had so much to say, I cannot. If one 
e could imagine' — * * * ( But it is no use ; I cannot write 
6 wisely on this matter. I suppose no human being was 
{ ever devoted to another more entirely than she; — and 
i that makes the change not less but more bearable. It 
' seems as if she could not be gone quite; and that in- 
£ deed is my faith. 

' Mr. James, your New-England friend, was here 
c only for a few days; I saw him several times, and liked 
f him. They went, on the £4th of last month, back to 
e London, — or so purposed, — because there is no pave- 
e ment here for him to walk on. I want to know where 
e he is, and thought I should be able to learn from you. 
( I gave him a Note for Mill, who perhaps may have seen 
' him. I think this is all at present from, — Yours, 

1 John Sterling.' 

Of his health, all this while, we had heard little de- 
finite; and understood that he was very quiet and careful; 
in virtue of which grand improvement we vaguely con- 
sidered all others would follow. Once let him learn well 
to be slow as the common run of men are, would not all 
be safe and well? Nor through the winter, or the cold 



Chap. XIII. VENTNOR : DEATH. 329 

spring months, did bad news reach us; perhaps less 
news of any kind than had been usual, which seemed 
to indicate a still and wholesome way of life and work. 
Not till ( April 4th, 1844/ did the new alarm occur : again 
on some slight accident, the breaking of a bloodvessel; 
again prostration under dangerous sickness, from which 
this time he never rose. 

There had been so many sudden fallings and happy 
risings again in our poor Sterling's late course of health, 
we had grown so accustomed to mingle blame of his 
impetuosity with pity for his sad overthrows, we did 
not for many weeks quite realise to ourselves the stern 
fact that here at length had the peculiar fall come upon 
us, — the last of all these falls ! This brittle life, which 
had so often held together and victoriously rallied under 
pressures and collisions, could not rally always, and 
must one time be shivered. It was not till the summer 
came and no improvement ; and not even then without 
lingering glimmers of hope against hope, that I fairly 
had to own what had now come, what was now day by 
day sternly advancing with the steadiness of Time. 

From the first, the doctors spoke despondently; and 
Sterling himself felt well that there was no longer any 
chance of life. He had often said so, in his former ill- 
nesses, and thought so, yet always till now with some 
tacit grain of counter-hope; he had never clearly felt so 
as now: Here is the end; the great change is now here! 
— Seeing how it was, then, he earnestly gathered all his 
strength to do this last act of his tragedy, as he had 
striven to do the others, in a pious and manful manner. 
As I believe we can say he did; few men in any time 
more piously or manfully. For about six months he 
sat looking steadfastly, at all moments, into the eyes of 



330 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

Death; he too who had eyes to see Death and the Terrors 
and Eternities; and surely it was with perfect courage 
and piety, and valiant simplicity of heart, that he bore 
himself, and did and thought and suffered, in this trying 
predicament, more terrible than the usual death of men. 
All strength left to him he still employed in working : 
day by day the end came nearer, but day by day also 
some new portion of his adjustments was completed, by 
some small stage his task was nearer done. His domestic 
and other affairs, of all sorts, he settled to the last item. 
Of his own Papers he saved a few, giving brief pertinent 
directions about them; great quantities, among which a 
certain Autobiography begun some years ago at Clifton, 
he ruthlessly burnt, judging that the best. To his friends 
he left messages, memorials of books : I have a GougKs 
Camden, and other relics, which came to me in that way, 
and are among my sacred possessions. The very Letters 
of his friends he sorted and returned; had each friend's 
Letters made into a packet, sealed with black, and duly 
addressed for delivery when the time should come. 

At an early period of his illness, all visitors had of 
course been excluded, except his most intimate ones : 
before long, so soon as the end became apparent, he 
took leave even of his Father, to avoid excitements and 
intolerable emotions ; and except his Brother and the 
Maurices, who were generally about him coming and 
going, none were admitted. This latter form of life, I 
think, continued for above three months. Men were 
still working about his grounds, of whom he took some 
charge; needful works, great and small, let them not 
pause on account of him. He still rose from bed; had 
still some portion of his day which he could spend in his 
Library, Besides business there, he read a good deal, 



Chap. XIII. VENTNOR : DEATH. 331 

— earnest books; the Bible, most earnest of books, his 
chief favourite. He still even wrote a good deal. To 
his eldest Boy, now Mr. Newman's ward, who had been 
removed to the Maurices' since the beginning of this 
illness, he addressed, every day or two, sometimes daily, 
for eight or nine weeks, a Letter, of general paternal ad- 
vice and exhortation ; interspersing, sparingly, now and 
then, such notices of his own feelings and condition as 
could be addressed to a boy. These Letters I have lately 
read: they give, beyond any he has written, a noble 
image of the intrinsic Sterling; — the same face we had 
long known ; but painted now as on the azure of Eter- 
nity, serene, victorious, divinely sad; the dusts and ex- 
traneous disfigurements imprinted on it by the world, 
now washed away. One little Excerpt, not the best, 
but the fittest for its neighbourhood here, will be wel- 
come to the reader : 

* To Master Edward C. Sterling, London. 

' Hillside, Ventnor, June 29th, 1844. 

' My dear Boy, — We have been going on here as 
e quietly as possible, with no event that I know of. 
' There is nothing except books to occupy me. But 
1 you may suppose that my thoughts often move towards 
6 you, and that I fancy what you may be doing in the 
1 great City, — the greatest on the Earth, — where I spent 
' so many years of my life. I first saw London when I 
c was between eight and nine years old, and then lived 
' in or near it for the whole of the next ten, and more 
c there than anywhere else for seven years longer. 
' Since then I have hardly ever been a year without 
' seeing the place, and have often lived in it for a con- 



332 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

6 siderable time. There I grew from childhood to be 
6 a man. My little Brothers and Sisters, and since, my 
c Mother, died and are buried there. There I first saw 
f your Mamma, and was there married. It seems as if, 
' in some strange way, London were a part of Me or I 
e of London. I think of it often, not as full of noise and 
e dust and confusion, but as something silent, grand and 
' everlasting. 

c When I fancy how you are walking in the same 
' streets, and moving along the same river, that I used 
' to watch so intently, as if in a dream, when younger 
( than you are, — I could gladly burst into tears, not of 
' grief, but with a feeling that there is no name for. 
' Everything is so wonderful, great and holy, so sad and 
' yet not bitter, so full of Death and so bordering on 
( Heaven. Can you understand anything of this? If 
( you can, you will begin to know what a serious matter 
e our Life is ; how unworthy and stupid it is to trifle it 
e away without heed ; what a wretched, insignificant, 
e worthless creature any one comes to be, who does not 
e as soon as possible bend his whole strength, as in 
' stringing a stiff 1 bow, to doing whatever task lies first 
4 before him.' * * * 

( We have a mist here today from the sea. It re- 
6 minds me of that which I used to see from my house 
6 in St. Yincent, rolling over the great volcano and the 
6 mountains round it. I used to look at it from our win- 
e dows with your Mamma, and you a little baby in her 
f arms. 

' This Letter is not so well written as I could wish, 
' but I hope you will be able to read it. — Your affec- 
c tionate Papa, 

tf John Sterling.' 



Chap. XIII. VENTNOR : DEATH. 333 

These Letters go from June 9th to August 2d, at 
which latter date vacation- time arrive d, and the Boy- 
returned to him. The Letters are preserved ; and surely 
well worth preserving. 

In this manner he wore the slow doomed months 
away. Day after day his little period of Library went 
on waning, shrinking into less and less; but I think it 
never altogether ended till the general end came. — For 
courage, for active audacity we had all known Sterling; 
but such a fund of mild stoicism, of devout patience and 
heroic composure, we did not hitherto know in him. 
His sufferings, his sorrows, all his unutter abilities in 
this slow agony, he held right manfully down ; marched 
loyally, as at the bidding of the Eternal, into the dread 
Kingdoms, and no voice of weakness was heard from 
him. Poor noble Sterling, he had struggled so high 
and gained so little here ! But this also he did gain, to 
be a brave man, and it was much. 

Summer passed into Autumn : Sterling's earthly busi- 
nesses, to the last detail of them, were now all as good as 
done; his strength too was wearing to its end, his daily 
turn in the Library shrunk now to a span. He had to 
hold himself as if in readiness for the great voyage at 
any moment. One other Letter I must give ; not quite 
the last message I had from Sterling, but the last that 
can be inserted here ; a brief Letter, fit to be forever 
memorable to the receiver of it : 

( To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London. 

' Hillside, Ventnor, August 10th, 1844. 

' My dear Carlyle, — For the first time for many 
e months it seems possible to send you a few words ; 



334 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

' merely, however, for Remembrance and Farewell. On 
' higher matters there is nothing to say. I tread the 
f common road into the great darkness, without any 
' thought of fear, and with yery much of hope. Cer- 
e tainty indeed I haye none. "With regard to You and 
( Me I cannot begin to write ; having nothing for it but 
c to keep shut the lid of those secrets with all the iron 
e weights that are in my power. Towards me it is still 
( more true than towards England that no man has been 
f and done like you. Heaven bless you ! If I can lend 
' a hand when there, that will not be wanting. It is 
e all very strange, but not one hundredth part so sad as 
c it seems to the standers-by. 

e Your Wife knows my mind towards her, and will 
( believe it without asseverations. 

( Yours to the last, 

( John Sterling.' 

It was a bright Sunday morning when this Letter 
came to me : if in the great Cathedral of Immensity I 
did no worship that day, the fault surely was my own. 
Sterling affectionately refused to see me; which also was 
kind and wise. And four days before his death, there 
are some stanzas of verse for me, written as if in star- 
fire and immortal tears; which are among my sacred 
possessions, to be kept for myself alone. 

His business with the world was done; the one busi- 
ness now to await silently what may lie in other grander 
worlds. " God is great," he was wont to say: " God is 
great." The Maurices were now constantly near him; 
Mrs. Maurice assiduously watching over him. On the 
evening of Wednesday the 18th of September, his Bro- 
ther, as he did every two or three days, came down; 



Chap. XIII. VENTNOR: DEATH. 335 

found him in the old temper, weak in strength but not 
very sensibly weaker; they talked calmly together for 
an hour ; then Anthony left his bedside, and retired 
for the night, not expecting any change. But suddenly 
about eleven o'clock, there came a summons and alarm: 
hurrying to his Brother's room, he found his Brother 
dying ; and in a short while more the faint last struggle 
was ended, and all those struggles and strenuous often- 
foiled endeavours of eight-and-thirty years lay hushed 
in death. 



CHAPTEE XIV. 



CONCLUSION. 



Sterling was of rather slim but well-boned wiry figure, 
perhaps an inch or two from six feet in height ; of blonde 
complexion, without colour, yet not pale or sickly ; dark- 
blonde hair, copious enough, which he usually wore short. 
The general aspect of him indicated freedom, perfect 
spontaneity, with a certain careless natural grace. In 
his apparel, you could notice, he affected dim colours, 
easy shapes ; cleanly always, yet even in this not fasti- 
dious or conspicuous : he sat or stood, oftenest, in loose 
sloping postures ; walked with long strides, body care- 
lessly bent, head flung eagerly forward, right hand 
perhaps grasping a cane, and rather by the middle to 
swing it, than by the end to use it otherwise. An atti- 
tude of frank, cheerful impetuosity, of hopeful speed 
and alacrity; which indeed his physiognomy, on all 
sides of it, offered as the chief expression. Alacrity, 
velocity, joyous ardour, dwelt in the eyes too, which 
were of brownish grey, full of bright kindly life, rapid 
and frank rather than deep or strong. A smile, half 
of kindly impatience, half of real mirth, often sat on 
his face. The head was long ; high over the vertex ; in 
the brow, of fair breadth, but not high for such a man. 

In the voice, which was of good tenor sort, rapid 
and strikingly distinct, powerful too, and except in some 



Chap. XIV. CONCLUSION. 337 

of the higher notes harmonious, there was a clear-ring- 
ing metallic tone, — which I often thought was wonder- 
fully physiognomic. A certain splendour, beautiful, but 
not the deepest or the softest, which I could call a splen- 
dour as of burnished metal, — fiery valour of heart, swift 
decisive insight and utterance, then a turn for brilliant 
elegance, also for ostentation, rashness, &c. &c, — in 
short a flash as of clear-glancing sharp-cutting steel, lay 
in the whole nature of the man, in his heart and in his 
intellect, marking alike the excellence and the limits of 
them both. His laugh, which on light occasions was 
ready and frequent, had in it no great depth of gaiety, 
or sense for the ludicrous in men or things ; you might 
call it rather a good smile become vocal than a deep 
real laugh : with his whole man I never saw him laugh. 
A clear sense of the humorous he had, as of most other 
things; but in himself little or no true humour; — nor 
did he attempt that side of things. To call him deficient 
in sympathy would seem strange, him whose radiances 
and resonances went thrilling over all the world, and 
kept him in brotherly contact with all : but I may say 
his sympathies dwelt rather with the high and sublime 
than with the low or ludicrous ; and were, in any field, 
rather light, wide and lively, than deep, abiding or 
great. 

There is no Portrait of him which tolerably resembles. 
The miniature Medallion, of which Mr. Hare has given 
an Engraving, offers us, with no great truth in physical 
details, one, and not the best, superficial expression of 
his face, as if that with vacuity had been what the face 
contained ; and even that Mr. Hare's engraver has dis- 
figured into the nearly or the utterly irre cognisable. 
Two Pencil-sketches, which no artist could approve of, 

z 



338 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

hasty sketches done in some social hour, one by his 
friend Spedding, one by Baynim the Novellist, whom 
he slightly knew and had been kind to, tell a much 
truer story so far as they go : of these his Brother has 
engravings ; but these also I must suppress as inade- 
quate for strangers. 

Nor in the way of Spiritual Portraiture does there, 
after so much writing and excerpting, anything of im- 
portance remain for me to say. John Sterling and his 
Life in this world were — such as has been already said. 
In purity of character, in the so-called moralities, in all 
manner of proprieties of conduct, so as tea-tables and 
other human tribunals rule them, he might be defined 
as perfect, according to the world* s pattern: in these 
outward tangible respects, the world's criticism of him 
must have been praise and that only. An honourable 
man, and good citizen ; discharging, with unblamable 
correctness, all functions and duties laid on him by the 
customs (mores) of the society he lived in, — with cor- 
rectness and something more. In all these particulars, 
a man perfectly moral, or of approved virtue according 
to the rules. 

Nay in the far more essential tacit virtues, which are 
not marked on stone tables, or so apt to be insisted on 
by human creatures over tea or elsewhere, — in clear and 
perfect fidelity to Truth wherever found, in childlike 
and soldierlike, pious and valiant loyalty to the Highest, 
and what of good and evil that might send him, — he 
excelled among good men. The joys and the sorrows 
of his lot he took with true simplicity and acquiescence. 
Like a true son, not like a miserable mutinous rebel, 
he comported himself in this Universe. Extremity of 



Chap. XIV. CONCLUSION. 339 

distress, — and surely his fervid temper had enough of 
contradiction in this world, — could not tempt him into 
impatience at any time. By no chance did you ever 
hear from him a whisper of those mean repinings, 
miserable arraignings and questionings of the Eternal 
Power, such as weak souls even well disposed will 
sometimes give way to in the pressure of their de- 
spair ; to the like of this he never yielded, or shewed 
the least tendency to yield ; — which surely was well on 
his part. For the Eternal Power, I still remark, will 
not answer the like of this, but silently and terribly ac- 
counts it impious, blasphemous and damnable, and now 
as heretofore will visit it as such. Not a rebel but a 
son, I said; willing* to suffer when Heaven said, Thou 
shalt; — and withal, what is perhaps rarer in such a 
combination, willing to rejoice also, and right cheerily 
taking the good that was sent, whensoever or in what- 
ever form it came. 

A pious soul we may justly call him ; devoutly sub- 
missive to the will of the Supreme in all things : the 
highest and sole essential form which Religion can as- 
sume in man, and without which all forms of religion are 
a mockery and a delusion in man. Doubtless, in so clear 
and filial a heart there must have dwelt the perennial feel- 
ing of silent worship ; which silent feeling, as we have 
seen, he was eager enough to express by all good ways 
of utterance ; zealously adopting such appointed forms 
and creeds as the Dignitaries of the World had fixed 
upon and solemnly named recommendable ; prostrating 
his heart in such Church, by such accredited rituals and 
seemingly fit or half-fit methods, as his poor time and 
country had to offer him, — not rejecting the said me- 
thods till they stood convicted of palpable w^fitness, and 



340 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

then doing it right gently withal, rather letting them 
drop as pitiably dead for him, than angrily hurling 
them out of doors as needing to be killed. By few 
Englishmen of his epoch had the thing called Church 
of England been more loyally appealed to as a spiritual 
mother. 

And yet, as I said before, it may be questioned 
whether piety, what we call devotion or worship, was 
the principle deepest in him. In spite of his Coleridge 
discipleship, and his once headlong operations following 
thereon, I used to judge that his piety was prompt and 
pure rather than great or intense ; that on the whole, 
religious devotion was not the deepest element of him. 
His reverence was ardent and just, ever ready for the 
thing or man that deserved revering, or seemed to de- 
serve it: but he was of too joyful, light and hoping a 
nature to go to the depths of that feeling, much more 
to dwell perennially in it. He had no fear in his com- 
position ; terror and awe did not blend with his respect 
of anything. In no scene or epoch could he have been 
a Church Saint, a fanatic enthusiast, or have worn out 
his life in passive martyrdom, sitting patient in his grim 
coal-mine looking at the ' three ells ' of Heaven high 
overhead. In sorrow he would not dwell; all sorrow 
he swiftly subdued, and shook away from him. How 
could you have made an Indian Eakeer of the Greek 
Apollo, f whose bright eye lends brightness, and never 
yet saw a shadow?' — I should say, not religious rever- 
ence, rather artistic admiration was the essential cha- 
racter of him : a fact connected with all other facts 
in the physiognomy of his life and self, and giving a 
tragic enough character to much of the history he had 
among us. 



Chap. XIV. CONCLUSION. 341 

Poor Sterling, he was by nature appointed for a 
Poet, then, — a Poet after his sort, or recogniser and 
delineator of the Beautiful ; and not for a Priest at all ? 
Striving towards the sunny heights, out of such a level 
and through such an element as ours in these days is, 
he had strange aberrations appointed him, and painful 
wanderings amid the miserable gas-lights, bog -fires, 
dancing meteors and putrid phosphorescences which 
form the guidance of a young human soul at present ! 
Not till after trying all manner of sublimely illuminated 
places, and finding that the basis of them was putridity, 
artificial gas and quaking bog, did he, when his strength 
was all done, discover his true sacred hill, and passion- 
ately climb thither while life was fast ebbing! — A 
tragic history, as all histories are ; yet a gallant, brave 
and noble one, as not many are. It is what, to a radiant 
son of the Muses, and bright messenger of the harmo- 
nious Wisdoms, this poor world, — if he himself have not 
strength enough, and inertia enough, and amid his har- 
monious eloquences silence enough, — has provided at 
present. Many a high-striving, too-hasty soul, seeking 
guidance towards eternal excellence from the official 
Blackartists, and successful Professors of political, eccle- 
siastical, philosophical, commercial, general and parti- 
cular Legerdemain, will recognise his own history in 
this image of a fellow pilgrim's. 

Over-haste was Sterling's continual fault ; over-haste, 
and want of the due strength, — alas, mere want of the 
due inertia chiefly ; which is so common a gift for most 
part ; and proves so inexorably needful withal ! But he 
was good and generous and true; joyful where there 
was joy, patient and silent where endurance was re- 
quired of him ; shook innumerable sorrows, and thick- 



342 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

crowding forms of pain, gallantly away from him ; fared 
frankly forward, and with scrupulous care to tread on no 
one's toes. True, above all, one may call him ; a man of 
perfect veracity in thought, word and deed. Integrity 
towards all men — nay integrity had ripened with him 
into chivalrous generosity ; there was no guile or base- 
ness anywhere found in him. Transparent as crystal; 
he could not hide anything sinister, if such there had 
been to hide. A more perfectly transparent soul I have 
never known. It was beautiful, to read all those inte- 
rior movements ; the little shades of affectations, ostenta- 
tions ; transient spurts of anger, which never grew to 
the length of settled spleen : all so naive, so childlike, 
the very faults grew beautiful to you. 

And so he played his part among us, and has now 
ended it : in this first half of the Nineteenth Century, 
such was the shape of human destinies the world and 
he made out between them. He sleeps now, in the lit- 
tle burying-ground of Bonchurch ; bright, ever-young 
in the memory of others that must grow old ; and was 
honourably released from his toils before the hottest of 
the day. 

All that remains, in palpable shape, of John Ster- 
ling's activities in this world are those Two poor Vo- 
lumes; scattered fragments gathered from the general 
waste of forgotten ephemera by the piety of a friend : 
an inconsiderable memorial ; not pretending to have 
achieved greatness ; only disclosing, mournfully, to the 
more observant, that a promise of greatness was there. 
Like other such lives, like all lives, this is a tragedy : 
high hopes, noble efforts ; under thickening difficulties 
and impediments, ever-new nobleness of valiant effort ; 



Chap. XIV. CONCLUSION. 343 

— and the result death, with conquests by no means cor- 
responding. A life which cannot challenge the world's 
attention ; yet which does modestly solicit it, and per- 
haps on clear study will be found to reward it. 

On good evidence let the world understand that 
here was a remarkable soul born into it; who, more 
than others, sensible to its influences, took intensely 
into him such tint and shape of feature as the world 
had to offer there and then ; fashioning himself eagerly 
by whatsoever of noble presented itself; participating 
ardently in the world's battle, and suffering deeply in 
its bewilderments; — whose Life-pilgrimage accordingly 
is an emblem, unusually significant, of the world's own 
during those years of his. A man of infinite suscep- 
tivity ; who caught everywhere, more than others, the 
colour of the element he lived in, the infection of all 
that was or appeared honourable, beautiful and manful 
in the tendencies of his Time ; — whose history therefore 
is, beyond others, emblematic of that of his Time. 

In Sterling's Writings and Actions, were they capa- 
ble of being well read, we consider that there is for all 
true hearts, and especially for young noble seekers, and 
strivers towards what is highest, a mirror in which some 
shadow of themselves and of their immeasurably com- 
plex arena will profitably present itself. Here also is 
one encompassed and struggling even as they now are. 
This man also had said to himself, not in mere Cate- 
chism words, but with all his instincts, and the question 
thrilled in every nerve of him, and pulsed in every drop 
of his blood : " What is the chief end of man ? Behold, 
" I too would live and work as beseems a denizen of 
" this Universe, a child of the Highest God. By what 
" means is a noble life still possible for me here ? Ye 



344 JOHN STERLING. Part II. 

cc Heavens and thou Earth, oh, how?" — The history of 
this long-continued prayer and endeavour, lasting in 
various figures for near forty years, may now and for 
some time coming have something to say to men ! 

Nay, what of men or of the world ? Here, visible to 
myself, for some while, was a brilliant human presence, 
distinguishable, honourable and lovable amid the dim 
common populations ; among the million little beautiful, 
once more a beautiful human soul : whom I, among 
others, recognised and lovingly walked with, while the 
years and the hours were. Sitting now by his tomb in 
thoughtful mood, the new times bring a new duty for 
me. e Why write the Life of Sterling V I imagine I 
had a commission higher than the world's, the dictate 
of Nature herself, to do what is now done. Sic prosit. 



THE END. 



PRINTED BY ROBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKLYN, 
Great New Street, Fetter Lane. 



16 D 73 



LIBRARY OF 



CONGRESS 




°014 525 398 6 



